Even a "City Girl" Can Learn Philosophy and New Things from Chickens!

 

Peanut, the World's Oldest Chicken

#35 August 29:  Most chickens live 5-8 years, Peanut is the oldest living chicken at 21.  Her 71 year old owner in Michigan rescued her as a hatchling by helping her crack open the shell when she realized the chick was missing an “egg tooth” to help it break out of its shell.  When she tried to introduce “Peanut” into the flock, she was often bullied by the other hens, probably because she is small even for a Bantam hen, but she finally found her place in the “pecking order” and hatched many of her own chicks.  About 6 years ago she had had enough of Michigan winters even in the chicken coup and came onto her owner’s porch, demanding to come in.  She has been in ever since dining on blueberry yogurt and feed .  When Guinness officially declared Peanut, the oldest living chicken, Marsi Darwin self-published a children’s book, My Girl Peanut and Me – On Love and Life from the World’s Oldest Chicken.  Her message is “even if you are rejected, or feel a misfit, you can still find someone to bond with and have a long productive life.”  Who knew you could learn philosophy from a chicken? 8/30

#36 August 30:  And while we are on chickens.  My neighbor at Park’s Peak, Jackie Wilkens recently bought a brood of “Easter Egger” chickens.  They lay green and blue eggs!  She was thrilled when they started laying eggs and brought me a dozen.  They are truly beautiful as eggs go and make great omelets.  I remember as a child going to the State Fair and one of my favorite barns was the chicken barn, where all of the exotic “tufted” chickens were displayed.  I also remember it being a milestone when my Aunt Ellen decided I was finally old enough and responsible enough to carry the egg basket without dropping or breaking them when we would gather the eggs from her chickens. However, I forever remained terrified of the rooster who would squawk and try to peck me, often pinning me in a corner of the barn. 8/30

Why are there no A or B batteries?

#34 August 28:  Dave sent me this one.  Why are there no A or B batteries?  You have AA, AAA, C, and D.  Where are the A and B’s?  According to an article he sent me there are standards for A’s and B’s but the size and power are so slightly different from AA and C that they are impractical.  Originally A was the standard, but as electronics became smaller, AA and AAA became the preferred sizes. Now I want to know why 9-volt batteries don’t have a letter!!  According to Google, 9-volt batteries are called “E” but since they have the same voltage as C’s, the 9-volt name and snap stuck. 8/26

Did humans influence climate change 13,000 years ago?

 #33  August 27:  I’m still thinking about an article in Monday’s paper via the LA Times.  It talked about the relatively quick (200 years) climate change that occurred during the age of the La Brea tar pits 13,000 years ago.  We visited them several times when we were in Los Angeles.  According to this article, humans entered the picture near the end of the animals’ demise.  The landscape around LA and southern California changed from prehistoric woodland to a chaparral in just 200 years.  Emily Lindsey, a curator at the La Brea Tar Pits studied the bones of the animals and linked their demise to a study of the layers of sand and debris, especially charcoal they were able to date at the bottom of nearby Lake Elsinore.  While nature creates wildfires, the incidence of wildfires increased significantly with the arrival of humans.  They brought fire with them, but had little means to control it.  Coinciding with a natural drought phase, this resulted in the demise of the forest and the animals in the tar pits.  After this 200 year phase, the trees had changed to drought resistant pines and a flora and fauna associated with the chaparral.  It took 200 years for a relatively small amount of humans to cause this big change. Now with carbon emissions and many more humans, we see an even more rapid climate change, but the parallels are there and scary! 8/24

Mr. Rogers, The Trolley, and the Land of Make Believe

 #32  August 26:  Mr. Rogers is a hero to most child development folks and to most children from the 50’s – 80’s.  I was reading about him today and the article said that the red trolley traveled 5000 miles annually!!  Wow!  He would use it as a prop to transition between the real world and the “world of make-believe”.  When asked why there were no people in the trolley, he replied that it allowed the children to visualize themselves on board. 8/24

An Anatomy Lesson: Things I Learned about Bodies!

 Here’s some fun facts I discovered on the web about the human body:

#26 August 19:  Two bones in your body continue to grow even into your 70’s.  Your head or skull: your forehead moves forward while cheekbones move back.  And your hips continue to grow well into your 70’s.  So while your ass gets bigger, you get more room for brain power? 8/17

#26  August 20:  Glabella – the space between your eyebrows.  That’s a new word for me, but when would I use it? 8/17

#27  August 21:  We have wisdom teeth because our ancestors had to chew and crush food more.  I might have figured this out, but never really thought about it.  What I want to know about evolution is why do we still have them, and why are our mouths getting smaller so they have to be removed? 8/17

#28  August 22:  It’s a myth that we only use 10% of our brains.  That “fact” was just the opinion of William James, one of the founders of modern psychology.  It took off when Dale Carnegie cited him in How to Win Friends and Influence People.  See #26 – with bigger heads, do we really gain wisdom as we get older? 8/17

#29  August 23:  Babies have 300 more bones (mostly cartilage that later ossifies) than grown-ups.  They need to be pretty limber to live in the womb and escape from it!  8/17

#30  August 24:  We have more than 5 senses.  I learned a little about this when working in the inclusion of children with special needs.  I had never thought about proprioception, how the body views itself in space.  There is also thermoception which monitors temperature and nociception, our sense of pain.  As I get older, my thermoception is picking up cold more than hot and I have a fear of being that “little old lady” with her thermostat stuck at 80 degrees! 8/17

#31 August 25:  Your tongue has its own “fingerprint”.  While I’ve never thought about it; it is not surprising.  But I found this interesting:  Since it is relatively protected from external factors and is harder to change (think filing off fingerprints or altering your eyes or voice, it is being used for biometric identification, especially since someone must really consent to have their tongue printed! 8/17

OK of the 25 facts in this article,  I knew most of them, but learned 7 new ones.  I guess at 72, I’m pretty smart (see # 26 again!! Lol)… OK  I may not have come up with 68 years for the longest case of hiccups, but I knew it was almost a lifetime; or 68,000 miles of veins, but I knew it was a BIG number, but I did know that babies see black and white and then red first and that your hand has the most bones of any body part. (I didn’t know they only beat your feet by one bone!)

Coco-cola, Wild Things and Crocs!

 #24 August 16:  What does it mean when Coca-Cola has a yellow cap?  It is kosher and the corn syrup has been replaced with sugar. 8/15

#24  August 17:  Where the Wild Things Are was my son’s favorite book.  In an LA Times interview, Maurice Sendak confessed that the wild things were supposed to be horses, but his publisher told him his drawings looked nothing like horses and to ditch the Where the Wild Horses Are to Wild Things.  He then began to draw his “hideous, beastly relatives” that always wanted to squeeze and pinch him with their bad breath, blood-stained eyes, and giant yellow teeth.  Yes, as kids we all had those aunts and uncles, but I never knew they were the “Wild Things.” I wonder which relative Clay wanted to tame.  I know for me it was my aunt's cousins Doc and Al (Al for Alice, that always confused me!) Go, Maurice! 8/15

#25  August 18:  I can never remember the difference between alligators and crocodiles, except I thought I knew that alligators live in the US and crocs, in other places.  Not so.  While alligators have U-shaped snouts and crocs are more pointy, they are both to be left alone!  Alligators stick to fresh water, while crocs like salty environments.  AND they both live in the Everglades in Florida where the water is brackish, with both salt and fresh tributaries.  It is the only place where they co-exist. 8/15

A Hodge-podge: Happy Birthday, President, Play-doh, Couch or Sofa, and Don't be Rude with your Elbows!

 #19 August 11:  Happy Birthday was first published in 1893 in a songbook for kindergarten.  It was copyrighted until 2015 and was composed by 2 sisters in Kentucky, Patty, and Mildred Hill, one a poet/kindergarten teacher and the other a musician.  The first words were “Good Morning to All (x2) Good Morning Dear Children, Good Morning to All.  Mildred, the musician often used the pen name, Johnan Tonsor.  When it was under copyright, two million dollars a year went to a charitable foundation of the Hill sisters.   PS  Happy Birthday Dad, you would have been 99 this weekend! 8/14

#20  August 12:  The U. S. was the first nation to use the term “President” for a head of state. 8/14

#21  August 13: Play-Doh was originally marketed as a compound to remove coal soot from wallpaper.  When cleaner fuels made the compound’s sales lag, the owner’s sister-in-law Kay Zufall, a nursery school teacher began using it as modeling clay since it was non-toxic.  Later color and a compound were added to keep it from hardening so quickly.  When it was featured in an ad on Captain Kangaroo, sales took off in 1958. 8/14

#22  August 14:  What is the difference between a couch and a sofa?  A couch comes from the French word coucher which means a place to lie down.  Sofa is from the Arabic "suffah", a hard bench softened with blankets and cushions, intended for sitting.  So you sit on a sofa and curl up on a couch!  All the sofas in my house are couches!! 8/14

#23  August 15:  Why is it rude to put your elbows on the table?  It is so comfortable!  First, it comes from Ecclesiastes:  Be ashamed… of stretching your elbow at dinner”.  But in the realm of table manners it is meant to keep you from slouching, accidentally getting food on your arms and if you put your elbows on the table people on either side of you cannot make eye contact.  Now that last one makes sense.  I'll be more careful.  8/14

Pressreader

#18 August 10:  Something I learned on Facebook (and checked out to be sure it's true!)  The library offers a free app called Pressreader that allows you to read numerous newspapers and the Economist for free.  No more “you’ve reached your limit of articles”!!! 8/7

 

Taylor Swift and Tractor Trailer Trucks

 

#17 August 9:  Most good ideas have both a good and downside, an editorial in Monday’s paper implored Taylor Swift to bring her Era’s concert to Charlotte.  Josh Stein’s comments including several of her song titles make it worth reading if nothing else. https://eedition.charlotteobserver.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?artguid=187fbf39-87db-488c-83b5-11ce0da9e5bc  Last week, I wrote about “Taylornomics” and how her tour was boosting not only the individual cities’ bottom line, and even the Federal Reserve even credited the tour with boosting the U.S. economy!

 But buried in the article is the fact that her concert takes 90, that 9-0! Tractor-trailer trucks to transport the production.  This has to be a logistical nightmare.  My first thought was, what does this say about these mega tours and climate change? Seeing an artist in person is definitely a delight, but do we need a production requiring NINETY tractor trailers?  Maybe these concerts should go the way of the dinosaurs.  The tickets are already so expensive that they can only be purchased by “the elite”. 8/7

Addendum:  This week at the "end" of her tour she gave each of her truck drivers a $100,000 bonus!  How great that she is sharing her profits.

Learning about Climate Change

 

#12 August 4:  Venice is one of my favorite places on Earth.  The art, the warrens among the bridges:  all is breath-taking.  Scientists predict that Venice will be completely under water by 2100.  That means the Abbie and Ella’s grandchildren will probably never see it.  Climate change is real.  8/3

#13 August 5:  And keeping with climate change, a recently released Maris poll found that almost ¾ (72%) of Republicans said the economy should be given priority at the risk of ignoring climate change.  This despite that the majority of respondents, 53%, said addressing climate change should be given priority even at the risk of slowing the economy.  (80% Democrats, 54% Independents).  Look at Venice and the money we are spending on fires, heat, and disasters.  This is not going away.  Fire, heat, and disasters should not be politicized.  8/3

#14 August 6:  Dave just got a countertop dishwasher for his kitchen downstairs. He fills it from the sink, and it washes about 1/3 of a load of my "big" dishwasher upstairs but works great in his small kitchen. The best part is how little water he uses. He said when he fills it from the sink; he noticed it takes the amount of water he usually "wastes" waiting for the water to get hot. (Yeah, I know there are ways to save that water!) Go Dave! Save water! Save the planet! Sometimes gadgets are helpful in big and small ways. Economically, the $200 he spent on the dishwasher will never be re-cooped 1 gallon of water at a time, but see August 5. 8/4

#15 August 7:  A headline in today’s paper said, “Gravity varies around the world.”  I’ve never really thought about gravity.  The article explained that due to plate tectonic movements.  But it also talked about how climate change is also contributing to differing gravity pulls, due to the ice melting and shifts in where ground water can be found.  I also learned a new word, “geoid”.  The earth is not a round smooth sphere, but id lumpy, bumpy and irregular shaped.  I guess I intuitively knew this, but never had a word for it or thought about it and its implications.  As the Lawrence Ice sheet and Greenland’s glaciers melt, they equated it to pushing your finger into bread dough.  Eventually without the added weight of the ice, the land will return to its original shape, but may take 1000 years.  However with climate change this is accelerating.  8/7 (I’ve caught up to the calendar, which means I need to do some serious reading and observing.)

#16 August 8:  Would planting a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) trees reduce 2/3 of the emissions created from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution till today, as Speaker McCarthy said in Ohio in June?  Planting trees is good, right?  Yes it is, but the research McCarthy cited is fraught with errors and had to issue an “erratum” (another new word for me!) Planting that many trees while, not necessarily a bad thing, is “too little too late.”  First it would only decrease the rise of the earth’s temperature by 1.5 degrees (we’ll take any progress!) and would take 20-30 years (We don’t have that much time.), and the land mass it would take could threaten plants and animals not adapted to forest ecosystems (African savannas).  So like many initially good ideas, it’s face value and hype does not live up to its execution.  (In the Republicans’ defense, planting trees is not the only way they propose we fight climate change. (Another thing I learned from this article – Republicans have a climate change plan!) They also propose expanding nuclear power, accelerating the permitting process for energy projects (whoa!  Coal, gas?) and bolstering supply chains for critical minerals used in electric vehicles and other green technologies.  The article said the “young Republicans (and Dems) demand work on climate change and older folks are finally realizing they must court them. 8/7

Cardiac Arrest, More about Work, and We Stole Barbie!!!

 

#9 August 1:  In an article about Bronny James (LeBron James’ son) collapsing from a cardiac arrest during basketball practice: “Sudden Cardiac Arrest is rare but is the leading cause of death among NCAA athletes.”  Wow!  Hopefully, these recent high profile episodes will result in increased mandatory screening during physicals and increased awareness among trainers and coaches to intervene sooner. 7/28

#10 August 2:  An article in today’s paper did a 1 year follow up on the 4 day workweek experiment.  Companies in the project committed to 6 months of structuring 32 hr workweeks.  At one year the positive effects had not “worn off” but increased.  The only negatives reported were a small increase in burn out rates and lower job satisfaction, though those numbers while lower than at 6 months were better than at the beginning of the experiment when a 40 hour plus workweek was in place.  Time savings came from scheduling fewer meetings, streamlining communication and building in more focus time to reduce distractions.   Most workers reported that they would need at least a 10% salary boost, or “no amount of money” to revert back to a 40 hr. week.  Where were these experiments when I was working, before I retired?!!  7/28

#11 August 3:  Barbie originated as a “porn doll” in Germany.  Ruth Handler “stole” the Barbie concept from a German porn doll marketed to men. https://www.history.com/news/barbie-inspiration-bild-lilli 7/31

Climate Change, Work, and New Words

 

#5 July 28:  Climate change is interrupting and changing evolution! In an article about the decreasing food supply, not just from the grain being blocked from Ukraine, but low yields worldwide from climate change, an agronomist in Italy said, “They say plants should adapt to climate changes, but we are talking about cultures that evolved slowly over thousands of years; they cannot adjust to a climate that keeps changing so quickly and so dramatically.” 

#6  July 29:  QWP = quark gulon plasma  OR a GREAT WWF’s word!  (used against me in a solo computer challenge) 7/24

#7 July 30:  The headline in Wednesday’s paper said that Allstate was going to have to renounce a tax break agreement because they are not generating the new jobs promised.  Since the pandemic, most of their new hires are either online or hybrid, neither of which qualify for the tax break.  In the same paper, it talked about how companies that hire exclusively for flex time are hiring twice the number of folks than companies that require in-person work.  Hybrid working fell somewhere in between.  Another study said that complete flex time was not as productive or collaborative, but that hybrid work is often more productive than all in-person.  Another bonus of complete flex time hiring is that companies get a more diverse workforce with folks who because of disabilities, finance, or distance couldn’t be hired in complete face-to-face settings.  This seems especially true in high tech, expensive areas such as San Francisco.  Conclusion:  the pandemic has changed how we view work and it is still evolving.  Most companies will probably adopt a hybrid model to attract talent when possible.  7/26

#8 July 31:  A new word has been coined:  Swiftonomics  It is the economic impact communities gain when the Taylor Swift concert comes to town.  It was estimated that concert-goers spend $1300+ on food, hotels, special clothes to wear, merch, etc.   7/28 

Freakonomics, Meritocracy, and Political Myths

 

#2  July 25:  From Johann Hari in Freakonomics, author of Stolen Focus:  Americans only focus on a task for 3 minutes at a time! And if interrupted from sustained focus, it takes you 23 minutes to regain focus. 7/24

#3 July 26:  Meritocracy says work hard to achieve what you want…Not always true:  The slaves worked harder than anyone, and they got nothing.  Look for structural flaws before judging.  Yet Michelle Obama just posted a “you can do anything, pull youself up by your bootstrap type of speech.”  These don’t seem to go together. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EROCMGgfIuw 7/24

#4  July 27:  Stereotypes define our political parties, but do not make up the bulk of their constituents.  For instance, in some “myth busting research” according to Pew Research, Democrats aren’t young and Republicans aren’t old. This is because young voters while generally trending Democrat aren’t a large percentage of the electorate.  Therefore both Democrats and Republicans are both old!!  Also Republicans aren’t mainly rural and Democrats urban.  Statistically they both live mostly in the suburbs.  Republicans aren’t more religious than Democrats.  Most Democrats identify as Christian.  While Agnostics and Atheists usually trend toward the Democratic Party, they are a small part of their constituency. 7/24

Day 1: It's my Birthday!!

 

I wanted to pick just the right thing to report for the first of the 366 things I've learned. Poignant? Science? Social Justice insight? Then I woke up this morning to NPR telling me it's SHARK WEEK! AND there was a shark cartoon in the paper! The stars...er sharks have aligned! Here are 2 things I've learned about sharks: It is 400 times more likely that you will drown in the water than be bitten by a shark. Sharks don't have bones, they have cartilage like in your ears. AND Shark Week is 35 years old and I've never watched it!

All reactions:

5Kathy Brown, Jennifer Wilson Park and 3 others

A New Birthday Challenge: To Learn Something New Everyday!

It's time again for DEB'S BIRTHDAY CHALLENGE! This year I am 72!! How many times have you heard, or said yourself, “You learn something new every day.” But do we really? This is my birthday challenge: to learn 366 things this next year! (2024 is a Leap Year!)

Why? I’m fairly curious, but I would like to increase my curiosity, especially after being in a Pandemic Bubble. This will also be a good example for my granddaughters: an “old dog” CAN learn new tricks! I believe in lifelong learning and this year I will put my “journal where my mouth is!”

My “rules” (It’s MY challenge and I may change them!): I’m going to learn 366 new things – not necessarily one each day. I know that life will get in the way sometimes and I’ll need to “double up” when it does. The posts will be dated for each day of the year, but the actual day I write them will be at the end of each item.

My fears: That you will read my new fact and say, “You didn’t already know that?” LOL Hey, I finally learned it! And I hope I don’t learn 366 disjointed facts, but occasionally will see patterns, or draw new insights or connections. I’m sure that won’t happen with every new thing I learn, but hopefully, it will happen often, or at least occasionally.

Want to join me?