Category: Culture

Culture

Fun Facts about U.S. Presidents

I received the following items in an email from a friend yesterday, it’s an interesting list of curious facts about U.S. Presidents.

In 1954, Ronald Reagan’s acting career was going so badly that he took a gig as a Las Vegas stand-up comic for a few weeks.

John Quincy Adams Regularly Skinny-Dipped In The Potomac.

Grover Cleveland Was A Cradle Robber.  (He married the daughter of his law partner, at whose birth he was present. When his partner died, Cleveland became the girl’s legal guardian. Several years later, they got married at the White House, and had a child, Ruth (the namesake of the candy bar Baby Ruth).

Calvin Coolidge Had A Vaseline Fetish and a Mechanical Horse.  Calvin Coolidge was strange guy. Not only did he sleep quite a lot – over 10 hours a day – but had morning ritual where he enjoyed having Vaseline rubbed on his head while he ate breakfast in bed. He also had a mechanical horse installed in the White House so he could practice his horseback riding skills.

(Note:  the original email included a claim here that “Warren Harding Lost The White House China In A Poker Game”.  That, as it turns out, is false.)

John Quincy Adams cared very little about fashion and clothing. He wore the same hat for ten years.

Gerald & Betty Ford Were Fashion Models.  In the 1940’s Gerald Ford did a bit of modeling and even posed on the cover of “Cosmopolitan.” His wife Betty was also a dancer and fashion model.

James A. Garfield Was Ambidextrous.  Not only was he the first president to be both righty and lefty, but it was said he could write a sentence in Latin with one hand and write it in Greek with the other hand.

Ulysses S. Grant Got A Speeding Ticket … On A Horse in Washington DC.  (You’d think he could have talked his way out of that one.)

William Howard Taft weighed in at over 300 lbs and became stuck in one of the White House bathtubs.

Thomas Jefferson Had Two Pet Bears. When Lewis and Clark were exploring the West, two young bear cubs were sent East to President Jefferson. He kept the bears in a cage on the White House lawn and occasionally went on walks with them. Other strange presidential pets include: Alligator (John Quincy Adams), Elephant (James Buchanan), and Zebra (Teddy Roosevelt).

Thomas Jefferson Invented A Bunch Of Stuff.  In addition to inventing a rotating book holder that folded into a box (pictured) he also invented/improved on the inventions of the dumbwaiter, the polygraph (for recording), a pasta maker, the swivel chair, the sundial, and the pedometer.

Martin Van Buren Popularized The Phrase “OK”.  Supposedly, President Van Buren popularized one of the most commonly used phrases to date: “OK”, or “Okay”. Van Buren was from Kinderhook, NY which was also called “Old Kinderhook”. His support groups came to be known as “O.K. Clubs” and the term OK came to mean “all right”.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were all avid collectors and players of what children’s game?
Marbles.

Who was the shortest president? And the tallest?

  • The shortest president was James Madison, who stood 5 feet 4 inches tall (and weighed less than 100 pounds).
  • The tallest was Lincoln, who stood 6 feet 4 inches tall.

Which president set a record for the most trips abroad? (Hint: Not with a broad, but abroad.)

  • Bill Clinton set a record for the most trips abroad, at 133.

And last but not least:

Barack Obama Is A Comic Book Nerd.  He collects”Spiderman” and “Conan The Barbarian” comic books.

 

Are LinkedIn’s “Top Influencers” really just “Top Provocateurs”?

LinkedIn Logo

What does it mean to be a person who is influential?  I think most people say it’s about the ability to be persuasive.  And that’s a tough quality to measure.  But my many friends in the media try it all the time.  Influence is often assumed to directly correlated to the size of an audience someone has – if a large number of people pay attention to what a person says – voluntarily or involuntarily – that person is said to be influential.   A magazine is thought to be influential based on the number of readers it has.  The same is true with books, movies, etc.

LinkedIn has a measure they call “Top Influencers This Week”, it’s a box that displays the names and pictures of the individuals LinkedIn has determined are the most influential among LinkedIn users.  I ‘ve been noticing this feature lately because of an online discussion I’ve been monitoring within the Mensan community at LinkedIn.  The discussion is on the topic of the U.S. Constitution, citizen’s rights, gun control laws, and the aftermath of the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT.  I made the mistake of posting a comment or two at the beginning of the thread, which I generally don’t do, I try to stay out of political discussions at a professionally-oriented site like LinkedIn.  But there were a few fundamental misrepresentations of U.S. law that I figured might be a typo but were important to address, so I did.  Big mistake.  My email inbox has been flooded since with every comment since then, and even though I’ve gone back and deleted my original comments to try to get it to stop, they continue – I just received another two dozen comments in my inbox this morning.  Maybe there’s a “follow this discussion” box I can uncheck somewhere, but I haven’t looked yet.  But I digress.

Watching this discussion is making me aware of the LinkedIn “Top Influencer” feature.  The person who originated the discussion thread is currently listed as the number two “Top Influencer This Week” at LinkedIn, if I’m reading this correctly.  Another person in the discussion thread, who I believe has originated other discussions elsewhere on the site, is listed as the fifth most influential as I write this.

Here’s the problem: those two individuals are clearly in the minority of the discussion.  They aren’t influencing anyone, they are provoking most of the responses, and most comments are at odds with the two “top influencers”.  The reason LinkedIn charts them as “Top Influencer” is merely because they started a thread that got a lot of people involved.  But the majority of those people who are involved are arguing against the positions of the two “Top Influencers”.

So are these folks really “influencers”?  Perhaps LinkedIn should rename that feature “Top Provocateurs”, because that’s really all that is happening there.

So beware:  just because you’re told someone or something is at the “top” of any chart, be sure you know what the metrics are based on.

I hope I’ve managed to influence your thinking on this important aspect of data analysis.

 

The Skin Gun

And now for something completely different.

As you probably know, I generally use this blog to talk about entertaining and fun and unusually talented people, many of whom are friends of mine, and some of which you may not know about.  I generally stick to anything involving the creative arts, but am open to anything that’s interesting and perhaps a bit unusual.

This is one of those posts, and it’s not just fascinating, it represents a significant medical breakthrough.  And it’s a bit serious, so brace yourself for the subject matter.

Below is a video on YouTube that is a snippet of a National Geographic piece about something new they’re calling the “Skin Gun”.  The idea is that if someone is a burn victim and has lost a relatively large area of skin, this spray gun, which is sort of like a spray paint device, can be used to apply a solution to the burned area and allow the patient to heal quickly.

And “quickly” is an understatement.  In the video, you’ll see the first patient on which the device was used – Matthew Uram, described in the video as a Pennsylvania state police officer.   After experiencing second-degree burns, his doctor asked him if he was interested in trying this device, and he did.  It took 90 minutes to prepare the solution and apply it.  “They did it on a Friday, my follow-up was that Monday and … it was healed.”

Amazing.

Note:  I generally embed videos into my blog posts, but the video below is not embedded.  It looks like it is, but when you click on it, you’ll see how it reacts and you’ll be able to tell that it’s not embedded, it’s actually a link to the YouTube site, so you’ll see it over on the YouTube site.  The reason I set it up in this unusual way is simple:  if I embed a YouTube video, the video automatically incorporates the “splash” screen chosen by the YouTube user who uploaded the video.  For this video, the user apparently chose a somewhat shocking “splash” image from the video of a burn victim.  It makes sense over at YouTube, he was clearly trying to get attention and convey that it’s a burn victim video.  And you’ll see that image in the video below.  It’s not completely revolting – I’m sure you’ve seen worse – but it’s a bit shocking in the context of Skere9, which is a fun and entertaining site.  I wanted a chance to say “brace yourself” first.  So consider yourself warned!

The video is below, and highly fascinating.

 

The Skin Gun

Social Media Rock Stars Jon Ealy and Jeremiah Anthony

In October 2011, two students at Iowa City’s West High decided to use social networking to complimenet and encourage fellow students, as something of a counter to the practice of cyber-bullying that’s been reported in various news articles lately. The students are named Jon Ealy and Jeremiah Anthony. The practice has attracted a good amount of notice, particularly from Skere9.  There’s a photo at Pinterest of Jon and Jeremiah working together on the sites.  Their sites include a Twitter account named @WestHighBros.

And here’s a video – that only mentions Jeremiah for some reason, but – see below.

For “Old Christmas”: Carrie Underwood and “How Great Thou Art”

Today is January 6, which is “Old Christmas” in many parts of the world.  In Ireland, January 6 is observed as “Little Christmas“. The Feast of Epiphany may or may not be January 6 – it depends.  But the tradition of “Old Christmas” is always observed on January 6.

January 6 is also the day my grandfather passed away, twenty-seven years ago today, a day I’ll never forget.  He was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on December 25 – Christmas Day – and at his funeral, I heard some of the folks there in South Carolina remark that he was born on “New Christmas” and passed away on “Old Christmas”.

My grandfather was James Demery, and he was a great man.  And he played electric guitar a lot like Vince Gill plays in this video, a fact I didn’t know for years, even after I’d picked up the guitar myself at ten years old.  And whenever i think of gospel music like this – which I love – I often think of my grandfather.

I don’t generally post on Sunday, but this isn’t just any Sunday, not to me. So for today, here’s a unique video. This is perhaps the best performance of one of the greatest hymns ever – Carrie Underwood singing “How Great Thou Art”, with Vince Gill on guitar.

For more about Old Christmas, see:

The Cowboy Chicken Club

I had the fortunate opportunity to attend last week’s football game between my favorite team, the Washington Redskins, and our longtime rival, the Dallas Cowboys. The Redskins were victorious, amazingly enough, and we’re all looking forward to going to the playoffs this week, something that hasn’t happened in quite a while.

I was digging around for some old Redskins performance records and stumbled on this fascinating piece of history I’d never heard before, found at Wikipedia page titled Cowboys-Redskins Rivalry“:

In December 1961, an unknown number of Cowboys fans sneaked into D. C. Stadium, armed with bags of chicken feed. When Alaskan snow dogs were to drag Santa Claus onto the field during the halftime show, the pranksters would unleash dozens of hungry chickens onto the field – 75 white, one black. The significance of the black chicken was to symbolize how [Redskins owner George Preston] Marshall was the only owner in the league who would not recruit an African-American football player; Marshall stating, “We’ll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites.” [1]

Talk about a bizarre moments in football history.

Footnotes

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboys%E2%80%93Redskins_rivalry#Cowboy_Chicken_Club