IQ vs EQ vs SPEQ
This actually begins with another episode of "As The Assisted Living Facility Turns" because one of the residents is one of the best examples of what I'm looking at today. This resident is of above average intelligence (IQ), but his emotional quotient (EQ) is at basement level or lower. Worse yet, his self-proclaimed expert quotient is off the scale.
This particular resident, who is a major troublemaker, thinks he knows how everyone should be doing everything they do, better than they are presently doing it. That's not unusual. We all, at times, think we know better how someone should be doing what they are doing. When someone can't get the ketchup to pour from the bottle, rather than pound the bottom of that bottle while holding it upside down, one can gently insert the knife from their place setting into the bottle and the ketchup will begin to flow. But this person thinks he knows how everyone should do everything. How the food servers could be more efficient. How the patient care assistants could be more efficient. How the facility manager (who he considers to be incompetent) could do her job better. How the receptionist who just quit (she couldn't get a work schedule that would accommodate her college course schedule) could have done her job differently and better.
I'm so glad I don't have to sit with and listen to the idiotic ideas he spews forth. He's "angry" with me because I have allegedly "taken sides" against him. But I hear him all the way across the room at meals continuing to say how things should be. What's really frustrating is that there is no basis in fiscal reality involved in what he suggests. I'm going to speculate that he's never made a real business plan in his life.
I've chosen to be an employee for most of my adult life. Actually, I've almost always been employed or looking for employment. However, I owned and ran my own tax preparation service in the 1990s before going to work where I work now. I also co-owned and co-ran a small business involved in the refurbishing and sale of used computer equipment during that same time. I made money at both every single year I operated those businesses. I can write a business plan, create a budget, and so on. What makes someone think they know how to run someone's business better than the person who is running it, when their own ideas for it have no chance of working?
Then there's the story of...let's say "this person," who is not a resident here. This person is trying to utilize the services of a business that they've patronized in the past. They are trying to negotiate a discount equal to, or better than the discount received the prior year. They are telling the professional whose business it is that they should be given this discount because they did a great job the past few years, know this person's needs very well, and it shouldn't take as much effort as the ordinary fees and charges would warrant.
Now this person does own a business although judging by their attitudes, actions, apparel and automobile, they may not be doing all that great. Then again, maybe they are just really frugal, so we can't conclude anything from those things, only suspect. However, their ideas about discounting, value of services and the like are ridiculous.
The adage, "better to make part of something than all of nothing" isn't nearly as valid as people think it is, nor is it all encompassing. Should a restaurant want to discount its food prices, it can't reduce them below the cost of delivering the meal to the customer, unless they're using that as a loss leader to generate revenue elsewhere. Las Vegas hotel/casinos did that for decades. Running their bars, restaurants, clubs and basically everything other than the casino as a loss leader, in order to get people to go and gamble at their establishment. Not these days. With the exception of comps given to preferred players or club members, all of the facilities in a hotel/casino are running at a profit. Even the comps and player's clubs are generating net revenue for the bottom line because the majority of gamblers getting freebies are gambling away more over the long haul.
A business selling one service or product can't run it as a loss leader. There was a skit on a comedy show where they discussed this once and the owner said "oh no, we'll make up what we lose by increasing our volume." Funny joke, but pumping up the volume of a losing proposition just generates more losses; unless a gigantic increase in volume reduces the costs involved.
I'm going to work to keep my EQ higher, and my SPEQ from getting too high.
* * *
It is March 31st and along with all the other things this day is, it is the International Transgender Day of Visibility. I wasn't aware that this has been the case since 2009 until I read the story of Geena Rocero, a transgendered model who came out today in a piece written for CNN.
If you're a regular or semi-regular reader of this blog, you know I'm a staunch supporter of equality of treatment for all. The members of the LGBT community should have the same rights as every other human being. That being said, I'm not sure I agree with her use of language in this article. She wrote "I was not born a boy. I was assigned boy at birth. Understanding the difference between the two is crucial to our culture and our society moving forward in the way we treat - and talk about - transgender individuals."
I admire this woman for having the courage to come out, to transition, and to be so open about something that so many seem to have an illogical hatred toward and fear of. When she was born, she was born with a male body. When we are young males, we are considered to be boys. It isn't something "assigned" to us, it is a presumption based on physical evidence. For the most part, the transgendered don't begin to make the move toward living with the gender hard-wired into their psyche until they are older. Men rather than boys.
The fact that is becoming more and more acceptable by some parents to allow their children to begin the transitioning process before reaching puberty shows that at least some members of our society are changing our culture and the way we treat and talk about the transgendered.
Did a deity make an error? That's for you to decide based on your personal beliefs. In the scientific world, a person who is transgendered was born with a body of one gender and the mind/psyche (and if you ask me, soul) of the other. Assigned isn't a proper term. No one assigned them anything. Were that to be the case, a parent could assign a gender other than the physical gender to a newborn. A mother who wanted a daughter but got a son could simply assign "him" as a "her."
The first step toward showing more respect towards the transgendered has been taken. We refer to those who have declared their gender to be other than that of the body they were born into by their chosen gender. Chelsea Manning deserves to be labeled as "her" and "she" and to be able to begin receiving hormone replacement therapy while in prison. We can do much more to further the proper treatment of the transgendered by accepting them as they are, and not "assigning" anything to them that they haven't assigned to themselves.
* * *
It's a question that's been argued more vigorously since a 2006 book "Who Really Cares" came out. Which side of the political aisle is more generous, conservatives or liberals? Conservatives say they are. Liberals say they are. Like anything else, it's all in how you measure something.
A study published in August of 2013 by two political scientists from MIT concludes there isn't a real difference between the two, but that study contains a caveat early on. "At the individual level, the large bivariate relationship between giving and conservatism vanishes after adjusting for differences in income and religiosity."
Adjusting for differences in income is easy. What percentage of one's income does one give to charity is an effective measure for making sure that conservatives aren't giving more total dollars simply because they earn more total dollars.
Adjusting for religiosity is another matter altogether. Apparently these two scientists are claiming that giving to one's church isn't really giving. That makes no sense to me. Any gift that qualifies for a charitable contribution on one's tax return should be counted as giving. That it doesn't fit into a narrow model of someone's notion of contributing to the social welfare of the populace doesn't make it not charitable.
I'd love to see the political contributions of the two people who authored this study. I suspect it would be most instructive.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are wearing engagement rings. Will they wear matching gowns at their nuptials as well?
Kentucky Fried Chicken has 4,491 stores. Chick-Fil-A has 1,775. Chick-Fil-A is only open six days per week. So why is it that Chick-Fil-A's 2013 sales were more than $5 billion while KFC could only reach $4.22 billion? I think it is a combination of better food and astronomically better service.
Remember the last time you played Monopoly? Did you get the Community Chest card that reads "Bank error in your favor, collect $200? Well, that happened to 18 year old Steven Fields of Georgia only it was $31,000. Which he proceeded to spend just as fast as he could. Now the bank wants the money back and he is facing felony charges. A reminder, windfalls may not be yours to keep.
There is an assumption that the Republican Party is the party of the wealthy. So why is it that of the 10 wealthiest Congressional districts in the nation, eight of them are represented by Democrats?
Would someone inform Johnny Weir that his fifteen minutes are up?
Now that she's split with Orlando Bloom, Miranda Kerr wants to "explore" her sexuality. Let me be the first in line to volunteer to assist. Unless of course she decides to explore other women as she's said she might. Others can volunteer to take the photos of that.
If you still use Windows XP on your computer, April 8th is a serious deadline for you. If you don't upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8 before then, you're at serious risk to be hit with malware.
In my post tax-season haze, I missed an article last May claiming that The Rock was the first pro athlete to become a movie star. In the comments section, people claimed that others had achieved that long before The Rock. Names mentioned as having done it before him included Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, Sonja Henie, Basil Rathbone, Esther Williams and more. Almost all of whom were never "professional" athletes. But football players Jim Brown and O. J. Simpson did it before The Rock. I'm not sure I can label Jesse Ventura as a movie star though.
A big thumbs down to the fans of the Texas Rangers who left their garbage on a statute honoring a fan who fell to his death at their stadium.
Enrique Iglesias has been partnered with Anna Kournikova for more than a decade but his father Julio has never met her. Am I the only one who thinks that's weird?
Justin Bieber was booed at an awards show and he wasn't even there. It's okay, he's earned them.
Am I the only fan of the WWE who is tired of hearing about how John Cena is trying to protect his legacy?
* * *
March 31st in History:
307 – After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
627 – Battle of the Trench: Muhammad undergoes a 14-day siege at Medina (Saudi Arabia) by Meccan forces under Abu Sufyan.
1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1492 – Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish and Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1561 – The city of San Cristóbal, Táchira is founded.
1717 – A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.
1822 – The massacre of the population of the Greek island of Chios by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire following an attempted rebellion, depicted by the French artist Eugène Delacroix.
1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1866 – The Spanish Navy bombs the harbor of Valparaíso, Chile.
1877 – The family with samurai antecedents that responded to the Saigō army in Ōita Nakatsu, rebels.
1885 – The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened.
1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, was captured by American forces.
1901 – 1901 Black Sea earthquake.
1903 – Richard Pearse allegedly makes a powered flight in an early aircraft.
1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.
1909 – Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1909 – Construction of the ill fated RMS Titanic begins.
1910 – Six North Staffordshire Pottery towns federate to form modern Stoke-on-Trent.
1913 – The Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert.
1917 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.
1918 – Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.
1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
1921 – The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.
1930 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, in the U.S., for the next thirty eight years.
1931 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
1931 – TWA Flight 599 crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne.
1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
1945 – World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
1957 – Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
1958 – In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265.
1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
1964 – A coup d'état in Brazil establishes a military government, under the aegis of general Castello Branco.
1965 – An Iberia Airlines Convair 440 crashes into the sea on approach to Tangier, killing 47 of 51 occupants.
1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
1970 – Nine terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijack Japan Airlines Flight 351 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.
1979 – The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien).
1980 – The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors.
1985 – The first WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling event from the WWE (then the WWF), takes place in Madison Square Garden in New York.
1986 – A Mexicana Boeing 727 en route to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, killing 167.
1986 – Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England.
1990 – Approximately 200,000 protestors take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.
1991 – Georgian independence referendum, 1991: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 – The USS Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
1994 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.
1995 – TAROM Flight 371 crashed, killing all of the ten crew and 50 passengers on board.
1995 – Selena, an American singer, was murdered by her friend and employee of her boutiques Yolanda Saldívar, who was embezzling money from the establishments; the event was named "Black Friday" by Hispanics.
2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Pope Pius IV
Ashikaga Yoshiteru, Shogun
Rene Descartes
Pope Benedict XIV
Johann Sebastian Bach (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jXKIy_2p5U)
Joseph Haydn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PSIumklRO8)
Nikolai Gogol
Alfred E. Hunt (no, not Hunt's foods, he founded Alcoa)
Jack Johnson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUqhJzgSj4M)
Octavio Paz
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
William Lederer
Peggy Rea
Richard Kiley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rER7n6fcpzk)
Leo Buscaglia
Cesar Chavez (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns5NMHTk-yY)
William Daniels (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLRfhRuGNW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaoLe7wcA-Y)
Lefty Frizzell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50k18gL76AU)
Gordie Howe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD3fD6VX0uc)
Bert Fields
Miller Barber
John Jakes
Herb Alpert (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4JmSg7XafA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwtX5Fq20YI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcAzR2QyPCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EDW6gEQ2DU)
Barney Frank
Christopher Walken (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HenZ4Z7w0qM)
Gabe Kaplan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqWU9huMMco)
Al Gore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8vL-0xvhzE)
Ed Marinaro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6D_L0C3Xvs)
Vanessa Del Rio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmrcUlHc-IQ)
Nick Firestone
Steve Smith
Pavel Bure
Ewan McGregor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSwy412nttI almost certainly the best light saber fight of the entire franchise thus far)
Evan Williams
This particular resident, who is a major troublemaker, thinks he knows how everyone should be doing everything they do, better than they are presently doing it. That's not unusual. We all, at times, think we know better how someone should be doing what they are doing. When someone can't get the ketchup to pour from the bottle, rather than pound the bottom of that bottle while holding it upside down, one can gently insert the knife from their place setting into the bottle and the ketchup will begin to flow. But this person thinks he knows how everyone should do everything. How the food servers could be more efficient. How the patient care assistants could be more efficient. How the facility manager (who he considers to be incompetent) could do her job better. How the receptionist who just quit (she couldn't get a work schedule that would accommodate her college course schedule) could have done her job differently and better.
I'm so glad I don't have to sit with and listen to the idiotic ideas he spews forth. He's "angry" with me because I have allegedly "taken sides" against him. But I hear him all the way across the room at meals continuing to say how things should be. What's really frustrating is that there is no basis in fiscal reality involved in what he suggests. I'm going to speculate that he's never made a real business plan in his life.
I've chosen to be an employee for most of my adult life. Actually, I've almost always been employed or looking for employment. However, I owned and ran my own tax preparation service in the 1990s before going to work where I work now. I also co-owned and co-ran a small business involved in the refurbishing and sale of used computer equipment during that same time. I made money at both every single year I operated those businesses. I can write a business plan, create a budget, and so on. What makes someone think they know how to run someone's business better than the person who is running it, when their own ideas for it have no chance of working?
Then there's the story of...let's say "this person," who is not a resident here. This person is trying to utilize the services of a business that they've patronized in the past. They are trying to negotiate a discount equal to, or better than the discount received the prior year. They are telling the professional whose business it is that they should be given this discount because they did a great job the past few years, know this person's needs very well, and it shouldn't take as much effort as the ordinary fees and charges would warrant.
Now this person does own a business although judging by their attitudes, actions, apparel and automobile, they may not be doing all that great. Then again, maybe they are just really frugal, so we can't conclude anything from those things, only suspect. However, their ideas about discounting, value of services and the like are ridiculous.
The adage, "better to make part of something than all of nothing" isn't nearly as valid as people think it is, nor is it all encompassing. Should a restaurant want to discount its food prices, it can't reduce them below the cost of delivering the meal to the customer, unless they're using that as a loss leader to generate revenue elsewhere. Las Vegas hotel/casinos did that for decades. Running their bars, restaurants, clubs and basically everything other than the casino as a loss leader, in order to get people to go and gamble at their establishment. Not these days. With the exception of comps given to preferred players or club members, all of the facilities in a hotel/casino are running at a profit. Even the comps and player's clubs are generating net revenue for the bottom line because the majority of gamblers getting freebies are gambling away more over the long haul.
A business selling one service or product can't run it as a loss leader. There was a skit on a comedy show where they discussed this once and the owner said "oh no, we'll make up what we lose by increasing our volume." Funny joke, but pumping up the volume of a losing proposition just generates more losses; unless a gigantic increase in volume reduces the costs involved.
I'm going to work to keep my EQ higher, and my SPEQ from getting too high.
* * *
It is March 31st and along with all the other things this day is, it is the International Transgender Day of Visibility. I wasn't aware that this has been the case since 2009 until I read the story of Geena Rocero, a transgendered model who came out today in a piece written for CNN.
If you're a regular or semi-regular reader of this blog, you know I'm a staunch supporter of equality of treatment for all. The members of the LGBT community should have the same rights as every other human being. That being said, I'm not sure I agree with her use of language in this article. She wrote "I was not born a boy. I was assigned boy at birth. Understanding the difference between the two is crucial to our culture and our society moving forward in the way we treat - and talk about - transgender individuals."
I admire this woman for having the courage to come out, to transition, and to be so open about something that so many seem to have an illogical hatred toward and fear of. When she was born, she was born with a male body. When we are young males, we are considered to be boys. It isn't something "assigned" to us, it is a presumption based on physical evidence. For the most part, the transgendered don't begin to make the move toward living with the gender hard-wired into their psyche until they are older. Men rather than boys.
The fact that is becoming more and more acceptable by some parents to allow their children to begin the transitioning process before reaching puberty shows that at least some members of our society are changing our culture and the way we treat and talk about the transgendered.
Did a deity make an error? That's for you to decide based on your personal beliefs. In the scientific world, a person who is transgendered was born with a body of one gender and the mind/psyche (and if you ask me, soul) of the other. Assigned isn't a proper term. No one assigned them anything. Were that to be the case, a parent could assign a gender other than the physical gender to a newborn. A mother who wanted a daughter but got a son could simply assign "him" as a "her."
The first step toward showing more respect towards the transgendered has been taken. We refer to those who have declared their gender to be other than that of the body they were born into by their chosen gender. Chelsea Manning deserves to be labeled as "her" and "she" and to be able to begin receiving hormone replacement therapy while in prison. We can do much more to further the proper treatment of the transgendered by accepting them as they are, and not "assigning" anything to them that they haven't assigned to themselves.
* * *
It's a question that's been argued more vigorously since a 2006 book "Who Really Cares" came out. Which side of the political aisle is more generous, conservatives or liberals? Conservatives say they are. Liberals say they are. Like anything else, it's all in how you measure something.
A study published in August of 2013 by two political scientists from MIT concludes there isn't a real difference between the two, but that study contains a caveat early on. "At the individual level, the large bivariate relationship between giving and conservatism vanishes after adjusting for differences in income and religiosity."
Adjusting for differences in income is easy. What percentage of one's income does one give to charity is an effective measure for making sure that conservatives aren't giving more total dollars simply because they earn more total dollars.
Adjusting for religiosity is another matter altogether. Apparently these two scientists are claiming that giving to one's church isn't really giving. That makes no sense to me. Any gift that qualifies for a charitable contribution on one's tax return should be counted as giving. That it doesn't fit into a narrow model of someone's notion of contributing to the social welfare of the populace doesn't make it not charitable.
I'd love to see the political contributions of the two people who authored this study. I suspect it would be most instructive.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are wearing engagement rings. Will they wear matching gowns at their nuptials as well?
Kentucky Fried Chicken has 4,491 stores. Chick-Fil-A has 1,775. Chick-Fil-A is only open six days per week. So why is it that Chick-Fil-A's 2013 sales were more than $5 billion while KFC could only reach $4.22 billion? I think it is a combination of better food and astronomically better service.
Remember the last time you played Monopoly? Did you get the Community Chest card that reads "Bank error in your favor, collect $200? Well, that happened to 18 year old Steven Fields of Georgia only it was $31,000. Which he proceeded to spend just as fast as he could. Now the bank wants the money back and he is facing felony charges. A reminder, windfalls may not be yours to keep.
There is an assumption that the Republican Party is the party of the wealthy. So why is it that of the 10 wealthiest Congressional districts in the nation, eight of them are represented by Democrats?
Would someone inform Johnny Weir that his fifteen minutes are up?
Now that she's split with Orlando Bloom, Miranda Kerr wants to "explore" her sexuality. Let me be the first in line to volunteer to assist. Unless of course she decides to explore other women as she's said she might. Others can volunteer to take the photos of that.
If you still use Windows XP on your computer, April 8th is a serious deadline for you. If you don't upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8 before then, you're at serious risk to be hit with malware.
In my post tax-season haze, I missed an article last May claiming that The Rock was the first pro athlete to become a movie star. In the comments section, people claimed that others had achieved that long before The Rock. Names mentioned as having done it before him included Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, Sonja Henie, Basil Rathbone, Esther Williams and more. Almost all of whom were never "professional" athletes. But football players Jim Brown and O. J. Simpson did it before The Rock. I'm not sure I can label Jesse Ventura as a movie star though.
A big thumbs down to the fans of the Texas Rangers who left their garbage on a statute honoring a fan who fell to his death at their stadium.
Enrique Iglesias has been partnered with Anna Kournikova for more than a decade but his father Julio has never met her. Am I the only one who thinks that's weird?
Justin Bieber was booed at an awards show and he wasn't even there. It's okay, he's earned them.
Am I the only fan of the WWE who is tired of hearing about how John Cena is trying to protect his legacy?
* * *
March 31st in History:
307 – After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
627 – Battle of the Trench: Muhammad undergoes a 14-day siege at Medina (Saudi Arabia) by Meccan forces under Abu Sufyan.
1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1492 – Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish and Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1561 – The city of San Cristóbal, Táchira is founded.
1717 – A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.
1822 – The massacre of the population of the Greek island of Chios by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire following an attempted rebellion, depicted by the French artist Eugène Delacroix.
1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1866 – The Spanish Navy bombs the harbor of Valparaíso, Chile.
1877 – The family with samurai antecedents that responded to the Saigō army in Ōita Nakatsu, rebels.
1885 – The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened.
1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, was captured by American forces.
1901 – 1901 Black Sea earthquake.
1903 – Richard Pearse allegedly makes a powered flight in an early aircraft.
1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.
1909 – Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1909 – Construction of the ill fated RMS Titanic begins.
1910 – Six North Staffordshire Pottery towns federate to form modern Stoke-on-Trent.
1913 – The Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert.
1917 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.
1918 – Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.
1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
1921 – The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.
1930 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, in the U.S., for the next thirty eight years.
1931 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
1931 – TWA Flight 599 crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne.
1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
1945 – World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
1957 – Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
1958 – In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265.
1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
1964 – A coup d'état in Brazil establishes a military government, under the aegis of general Castello Branco.
1965 – An Iberia Airlines Convair 440 crashes into the sea on approach to Tangier, killing 47 of 51 occupants.
1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
1970 – Nine terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijack Japan Airlines Flight 351 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.
1979 – The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien).
1980 – The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors.
1985 – The first WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling event from the WWE (then the WWF), takes place in Madison Square Garden in New York.
1986 – A Mexicana Boeing 727 en route to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, killing 167.
1986 – Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England.
1990 – Approximately 200,000 protestors take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.
1991 – Georgian independence referendum, 1991: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 – The USS Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
1994 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.
1995 – TAROM Flight 371 crashed, killing all of the ten crew and 50 passengers on board.
1995 – Selena, an American singer, was murdered by her friend and employee of her boutiques Yolanda Saldívar, who was embezzling money from the establishments; the event was named "Black Friday" by Hispanics.
2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Pope Pius IV
Ashikaga Yoshiteru, Shogun
Rene Descartes
Pope Benedict XIV
Johann Sebastian Bach (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jXKIy_2p5U)
Joseph Haydn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PSIumklRO8)
Nikolai Gogol
Alfred E. Hunt (no, not Hunt's foods, he founded Alcoa)
Jack Johnson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUqhJzgSj4M)
Octavio Paz
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
William Lederer
Peggy Rea
Richard Kiley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rER7n6fcpzk)
Leo Buscaglia
Cesar Chavez (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns5NMHTk-yY)
William Daniels (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLRfhRuGNW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaoLe7wcA-Y)
Lefty Frizzell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50k18gL76AU)
Gordie Howe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD3fD6VX0uc)
Bert Fields
Miller Barber
John Jakes
Herb Alpert (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4JmSg7XafA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwtX5Fq20YI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcAzR2QyPCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EDW6gEQ2DU)
Barney Frank
Christopher Walken (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HenZ4Z7w0qM)
Gabe Kaplan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqWU9huMMco)
Al Gore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8vL-0xvhzE)
Ed Marinaro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6D_L0C3Xvs)
Vanessa Del Rio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmrcUlHc-IQ)
Nick Firestone
Steve Smith
Pavel Bure
Ewan McGregor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSwy412nttI almost certainly the best light saber fight of the entire franchise thus far)
Evan Williams
posted by me at 6:50 AM
<< Home