Paige was elected to the Baseball Hall Of Fame in 1971.
The Oreo has landed in Britian, the “Battle of the Biscuits” is on. I found the article linked to below, written by Brendan O’Neill, in today’s Christian Science Monitor.
Will the British abandon “tea and biscuits” for Oreo’s and milk? I think it will be an uphill battle. Getting the Brits to switch from tea to milk, at break time, is the big challenge. I love Oreo’s but they just don’t work well with tea for me.
I must admit my favorite cookie is Walker’s Shortbread, from Scotland.
What is your favorite cookie?
Excerpts from the Article:
London - “It’s very dark. It’s almost black.” May Woodward, an office worker in central London, is holding an Oreo cookie in her hands. It’s the first time she has ever seen one “in the flesh as opposed to on an American TV show,” and she’s not sure she likes what she sees. “It’s the color of wet mud!” she complains. “And the bit … looks like toothpaste rather than cream.”
She twists and turns the cookie in her fingers, staring at it from every angle with a screwed-up look on her face that seems to say, “Gross!” not “Mmm, cookie time.” You could be forgiven for thinking she’s handling some dangerous alien element, Cookie Kryptonite, say, rather than one of the best-known biscuits in the Western hemisphere.
She bites, chews, raises an eyebrow, chews some more.
“OK, I get it,” she says, finally. “I can see the attraction. It’s very sweet.” Suddenly she seems to change her mind. “Actually it’s too sweet … it’s becoming mushy,” she says, alarmed as tentative chewing becomes frantic munching to wolf the cookie down.
My impromptu taste test in Leicester Square is now attracting the attention of puzzled passersby giving us weird looks.
Ms. Woodward’s verdict is that the Oreo is “too … damp.”
I tell her that, according to the ads, it should be “dunked” before eaten.
“In tea?” she asks. (Dipping biscuits – we Brits call all cookies “biscuits’ – in a steaming hot cup of tea is an almost sacred ritual here.)
“No, in milk,” I reply.
“Milk?! A biscuit dipped in milk? Who does that?”
“Apparently Americans do,” I explain.
“Well, let them,” she say dismissively. “I won’t be doing it anytime soon.” And with that, she disappears into a throng of pedestrians, nonplussed by what has been labeled here as “America’s Favorite Cookie.”
“Kraft hopes the Oreo will capture Britain as it has America (with 419 billion Oreos sold since they first appeared in 1912).”
“Since its 1996 launch in China, the Oreo has become the No. 1 biscuit in that vast country. But the Chinese Oreo is very different from the American one – it has less sugar and it is a crispy cream-filled wafer. The version being launched in Britain is the exact same as the American one. Only the packaging has changed. At 74 pence ($1.44) a go, we Brits will get our Oreos in a long, thin tube.”
“We Brits are biscuit-mad. The British Department of Trade and Industry estimates that $3.1 billion is spent on biscuits here annually, and one newspaper estimated that the average Briton eats 1.5 tons of biscuits and cakes in his lifetime.”
“Some of these biscuits have a history of 150 years,” says Mr. Payne. He describes British biscuits as “thoroughbreds” specially designed – in a Darwinian process of the survival of the dippiest – over generations to suit British tastes. For example, he notes, “Our love of tea-dipping has influenced the selection of flour and the temperature at which biscuits are baked. Our biscuits are built for dunking.”
“Yet the Oreo, because of its high-sugar content, is “woeful” when it comes to being dunked in tea, he says. “In my experience, it dissolves. It’s not a survivor in tea terms like the British biscuit is.”
“Eating biscuits in a certain way is part of British culture, says Payne. It goes back to the days when lots of people worked in factories, and the only thing they could squeeze into their 10-minute breaks was “a cup of tea and two Rich Tea biscuits.” Biscuits had to be sturdy and satisfy hunger.”
“With their tightly laced corsets, long skirts, heavy shoes, and upswept hair, the mothers of 1908 bear little physical resemblance to their counterparts in 2008, dressed in shorts, Spandex, and sneakers. But as today’s busy mothers savor their holiday, some might think longingly of simpler times, before women spoke of “juggling” or “balancing” work and family. They might even be tempted to idealize mothers of a century ago, whose serene images grace family photo albums.
But wait. “It’s not a time to be romanticized,” says Stephanie Coontz, a historian and author of “Marriage: A History.” “Mothers in 1908 spent less time mothering than they do today. Even in the middle classes, they spent much less time with their kids than we would have imagined.”
One reason for this time deficit involves work. “Most families needed several wage earners,” Ms. Coontz says. “Women took in boarders, did sewing at home, cleaning, and all sorts of jobs that weren’t counted as jobs on the Census but were time-consuming.”
“Even mothers without paid employment labored endlessly doing housework. In 1908, a New York settlement worker estimated that the average woman, even in middle-class families, spent 40 hours a week just cleaning and shopping. Laundry was an arduous, two-day task, washing one day and ironing the next. Wood and coal stoves required tending and cleaning.”
“The mothers of 1908, like their counterparts today, received advice from pediatricians. Emmett Holt, author of “The Care and Feeding of Children,” was the Dr. Spock of his era, Coontz says. His advice to women: Don’t pick babies up when they cry, and do not breast-feed. And a noted psychologist, Dr. J.B. Watson, cautioned against using pacifiers or indulging in displays of affection. He wrote, “When you are tempted to pet your child, remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument.”
“In the early 1900s, about 10 percent of families were single-parent households, partly because of death and partly because of a high rate of abandonment. “A lot of women were living apart from their husbands,” says Steven Mintz, a historian at Columbia University.”
“Even so, Professor Mintz says, “Life was tough in ways we don’t appreciate.” Life expectancy was 51. Infant mortality was high. Most women could not vote.
In 1907, Laura Clarke Rockwood wrote poignantly in The Craftsman magazine about the need to simplify housekeeping: “This mother of to-day hurries from kitchen to nursery and over the other parts of the house, performing as best she can the many home duties of our times. But she is so overwearied in the doing of it all that the deep well of mother love which should overflow, flooding the world with happiness and cheer, runs well nigh dry at times.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0508/p17s02-hfgn.html
Every era presented it’s problems. I suspect it is no easier, or harder, to raise children now than it was 100 years ago, the challenges are just different.
If you could pick a decade over the last 100 years which would you pick to raise your children in?
The platypus may be my favorite animal in the world. The animal that wasn’t supposed to exist. When the first specimens were sent to Europe in the 19th century, scientists suspected a hoax.
The platypus is a link between the world of reptiles and our own mammalian world, with characteristics of both. It has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, lays eggs like a bird or reptile but also produces milk and has a coat of fur like a mammal. The platypus lacks nipples; the young nurse through the abdominal skin, so I guess we won’t see any platypus centerfolds.
A team of scientest, lead by Wesley C. Warren, a geneticist at Washington University, has mapped the genome of the platypus, which contains approximately 18,500 genes.
The platypus shares 82 percent of its genes with the human, mouse, dog, opossum and chicken. That’s right, the platypus is 82% human and we are 82% platypus.
Something we need to keep reminding ourselves of is how much we share with the other animals that populate our planet. Just as we should remember how much we humans are alike no matter how different we may seem to be to the naked eye.
The platypus genome represents a look back in time to when mammals split from reptiles, some 166 million years ago. The more we learn about the genes that we share with these creatures the more we learn about ourselves and the better we understand the world we live in.
Personally I love the idea that I am 82% platypus.
An article on the project on the New York Times site:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/science/08platypus.html
What is your favorite animal, besides dogs, cats and horses named Amos, [Papa -
]
Chelsea Morning - Joni Mitchell
Excerpt from lyrics:
“Woke up, it was a chelsea morning, and the first thing that I knew
There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too
And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses
Oh, wont you stay
Well put on the day
And well talk in present tenses”
Helpless - Neil Young
Excerpts from Helpless:
“Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eyes”
You’ve Got A Friend - James Taylor
From You’ve Got A Friend:
“When youre down and troubled
And you need a helping hand
And nothing, whoa nothing is going right.
Close your eyes and think of me
And soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest nights.
You just call out my name,
And you know whereever I am
Ill come running, oh yeah baby
To see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall,
All you have to do is call
And Ill be there, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Youve got a friend.”
I spent most of my life trying to lead a well organized, carefully planned life. The plan didn’t always work but I felt comfort in knowing I had a plan. Having a job did required planning out the day, but I also had a weekly plan, a monthly plan and yearly goals. I started and ended each day with my to do list. This even extended to my vacations. I would plan out each day in advanced and had an itinerary of sites I wanted to be sure to see. My calendar and my watch were my friend.
The last vacation I took was two weeks driving the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco. My uncle Jim had been diagnosed with cancer so it was his last trip before he started his treatments. He would live five more years. I planned out every day, booked all the hotel/motel rooms in advance. I found out when the ferry boats left to Santa Cruz Island, the buses to Hearst Castle. I know how we would be spending every day before we stepped on the plane to San Diego.
Once I retired I throw my clock away. The only time I use my calendar is when I set up a lunch or plan a date. I go to bed when I am tired and get up when I feel rested. Being a diabetic I do have a meal plan for each day, 150 carbs and 1,600 calories. No other part of my day is planned.
I don’t expect to plan any more vacations. Just unplanned road trips. If I get up and fell like hitting the highway, I just go, maybe north, maybe south, which ever direction I feel like.
I prefer the unplanned trips. Even though I have enjoyed all of my vacations, I always had one on the clock, one eye on the itinerary. Now it just whatever the day brings. No plans.
1. When you go on vacation do you make up a daily itinerary before you leave?
2. Given a choice would you prefer to have a very planned out organized day or just take each hour as it comes.
I had lunch this past weekend with some friends, two of whom are a gay couple. They are as happy as any couple I know and they clearly have a deep love for each other. One of them mentioned a singer he enjoyed listening to, the Irish singer Morrisey.
I am not a big fan of Morrisey. I do like his voice, he sings with such emotion. To my knowledge Morrisey has never openly stated he was gay. In many articles he refers to himself as being asexual and celibate.
In the following song I think he asks a very good question. Why is a person given a desire when expressing that desire is a sin?
A better question is why are some babies born with both male and female sex organs? Science can explain this as a defect or mutation in the childs genes. How does this fit into God’s plan?
I wouldn’t do you no harm
I was a nice kid
with a nice paper-round
Forgive me any pain
I may have brung to you
with God’s help I know
I’ll always be near to you
but Jesus hurt me
when he deserted me / but
I have forgiven Jesus
for all the desire
He placed in me when there’s nothing I can do
about desire
I was a good kid
through hail and snow I’d go
just to moon you
I carried my heart in my hand
do you understand?
do you understand?
Jesus hurted
when he deserted me, but
I have forgiven Jesus
for all of the love
He placed in me
When there’s no-one I can turn to with this love
Monday - humiliation
Tuesday - suffocation
Wednesday - condescension
Thursday - is just pathetic
by Friday - life has killed me
by Friday - life has killed me
Why did you give me
so much desire?
when there is nowhere I can go
to offload this desire
Why did you give me
so much love
in a loveless world
when there is no one I can turn to
to unlock all this love
Why did you stick me in
self-deprecating bones and skin
Jesus - do you hate me?
Why did you stick me in
self-deprecating bones and skin
do you hate me? do you hate me?
do you hate me? do you hate me?
Zuiikin English Videos
It became known as the Drake Equation, and when its inventor factored in the number of stars, the percentage likely to have planets around them, the percentage of those planets likely to be right for life, and so forth, he concluded the universe must be teeming with sentient beings.
2) Skeptic
Dr. Andrew Watson at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain, says the odds of finding beings like us elsewhere is very, very low — perhaps as little as 0.01 percent over the four billion years that a given planet like ours is likely to be friendly to life.
Dr. Watson argues that there’s a finite window for life on Earth–and we came into being relatively late in that window. The Sun is slowly growing in intensity so that Earth has “only” about a billion years before it gets fried.
“Structurally complex life is separated from prokaryotes [probably the Earth's first living cells] by several very unlikely steps and, hence, will be much less common than prokaryotes,” he writes in the journal Astrobiology. “Intelligence is one further unlikely step, so it is much less common still.”
An interesting debate on this topic can be found on the link below:
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article236.html
Questions
1) Do you believe there is life on other plants? If yes, is there a life with an intelligence at least equal to humans?
2) If we did find life found on another planet how do you think you would react to this news?





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