Goldfish aren’t exactly the best-treated pets — did you know, for instance, that they shouldn’t be kept in bowls? But at least they no longer have to contend with the goldfish-swallowing craze of 1939. It began, like so many bad ideas, with a dorm room bet. After boasting to his friends that he had once consumed a live fish, Harvard freshman Lothrop Withington Jr. was told to put his money where his mouth was and do it again for $10. He did so on March 3 with at least one reporter and an ill-fated 3-inch goldfish present, remarking that “the scales caught a bit on my throat as it went down.”
The event was picked up by LIFEmagazine, which kicked off the craze among college students nationwide. Marie Hensen of the University of Missouri School of Journalism was among the first women known to have joined in on the strange trend, and a number of records were set and just as quickly broken. A student at the University of Pennsylvania swallowed 25 fish, an MIT student claimed the “new world’s record for piscine deglutition” by downing 42, and Joseph Deliberato of Clark University is said to have bested them all by swallowing 89 innocent goldies in one session. The trend began to die down after the Animal Rescue League stepped in and Massachusetts state Senator George Krapf filed a bill “to preserve the fish from cruel and wanton consumption.”
As difficult as it is to imagine, access to a full bathroom wasn’t a household norm until well into the 19th century. Though the flush toilet was invented in England in 1596, the general public still used chamber pots and outhouses for centuries after, as most houses didn’t have indoor plumbing. It wasn’t until the end of the 1800s — after inventor Alexander Cumming improved toilet design with the S-bend, which trapped smells — that toilets became common in homes, especially in upper-class households, and even then they were initially kept separate from the bathtub and sink, in a room referred to as the “water closet.” Noting the lack of sanitation caused by pipes and traps running from room to room, health care professionals began urging architects to streamline their plumbing into a single location. Architects relented, and the “bathroom” was born.
By the late 1800s, most upper-class homes in the United States and the U.K. were outfitted with a tub, toilet, and sink, and middle-class homes followed soon after. In the wake of the First World War, bathrooms became increasingly common in working-class households, but still weren’t universal in the United States until the middle of the 20th century. Advances in plumbing led to the mass-production of the affordable, two-piece toilets still used today, and made the bathroom a household staple.
The Supreme Court was created with some definite oversights built into the process. It seems that the only way to get rid of one is to impeach and that has to start in the House of Representatives. It is unlikely that the process of impeachment will begin as long as the Republican Party holds the majority. When the opportunity provides, all the justices that have upheld Trump need to be impeached for Treason.
The events of Jan 6 clearly show that the followers of Trump were intent on stopping the peaceful transfer of power. That entire bonfire was built and stoked by Trump and that is also very obvious from the tapes of the event. Not voting to remove Trump from the ballot is supporting a treason act and it needs to be put to the judges that they also will face a day of reckoning for their crimes.
Our country is being torn apart because of one persons over inflated ego and his ability to stir up trouble. The charges he is facing and the efforts he has made to get people to threaten anyone that says anything against him are ripping our democracy apart. This should not happen and the threat of violence needs to land on the doorstep of every fool that supports Trump. None of them are prepared to accept that violence can also be used against them.
We teach children in Scouting Codes of Conduct and expect them to adhere to those rules. At every level when anyone is brought into an organization of any kind there are rules that are presented and expected to maintain. It is hard to believe that our highest court has no rules that they are required to or expected to obey. The current court is supposed to be so righteous and yet the hypocrisy of their actions tells the world that they are anything but what they claim to be. At this point in time it is hard to believe that any of them has a mother that would approve of their actions.
The nation has survived a great many things in it’s short history. A revolution, and then an attack to reverse that result, a civil war, and WWI the depression and WWII followed by the Cold War. The Korean Conflict and Vietnam as well as all the other times we have sent troops to fight and die on foreign soil for no good reason other than to make someone rich, or so it seems. Now we have a lone man and his ego to overcome and he has a following of individuals that are brave enough in a crowd but total cowards one on one. This person is saying that he will become a dictator if elected this time around. For most that should be enough to put a stop to this hope, most of us don’t need a belligerent father figure in our lives.
If we can make this issue die on the vine then hopefully we can go back and fix some other issues such as gun control, voting rights, women’s health care, LGPQ matters as well as a host of other things that have been proven to be positive for the majority of citizens of most free nations. Moving forward with justice and equality and honor is far more important than one man’s wish to rule.
If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?
Get money, big cooperate money out of politics… cooperations are not people . Government is supposed to be by the people and for the people and the common good not what is best for corporate profits.
The Supreme Court is really getting its day in the Sun. They have proven themselves to be anything but honest, voting to end abortion even after swearing that they would not go down that path. They have written an ethics bill for themselves that pretty much gives them immunity for life if they take bribes and do other deeds that honorable individuals would find offensive.
They are to hear cases in reference to former president Trump and it is unknown if they will uphold the Constitution or side with a treasonous ego maniac that feels he has the right to do as he pleases whenever he feels like it.
The states of Florida and Texas have gone to great lengths to get people of color to not vote. They have passed laws that make it possible for the state to put people in prison for voting if they happen to have a fine or judgment on the books that they do not know about. The need to dominate others is so important that the political waters of these states are poisonous to all that attempt to exercise their rights.
The DC appellate court found that Presidential Immunity is not absolute and that Trump will have to face the charges. The way the court wrote the findings makes it unlikely that the Supreme Court will be able to change anything to give Trump what he wants.
The belligerent actions of Republican Governors toward the federal government is very disturbing and unnecessary. Many of the State officials are attempting to be little empire builders in their own right and unfortunately most do not seem to possess the brain power to get it done. Strong men are supposed to get things done and all these clowns seem to do is make life more difficult for themselves and everyone else in their states. The hope of putting Trump back in the WH is just not acceptable. His intent is to become a dictator and since he has proven that he cannot manage a fruit stand let alone a country we can do without his brand of bull shit.
The comments made about Trump “telling it like it is” and he is “our voice” are so far from the truth that it is enough to make you sick. He is telling it the way you want to hear it and he is using first person as his target. By that I mean you all say how unfair you are being treated and how you would do it this way or that, typical armchair quarterback crap, and he is repeating you and that reinforces your rather pity me attitude. You believe he is going to do great things for you if elected, and the only entity he is looking out for is himself.
Read that many people are pessimistic at present. This is not a shocking outlook, the 1% feel that they are so privileged that anything they ask for they should have, to include who they want as President. With so many hoping to get Trump, a man with no morals, no spine, and no brains, so that they are able to get all restrictions removed from the way they want to run things, all profit and no consequences. We are getting closer to becoming cynical, not just pessimistic. If you are not sure what the terms mean then let’s define it. Optimism is when someone says please pass the cream, pessimism is when that person says please pass the milk, and the cynic says please pass the pitcher, he is not sure if there is anything in it but he wishes to check for himself.
Any a all comments, concerns, rebuttals are welcomed.
My dream home would be a model of efficiency that would be powered by geothermal and solar energy, and also have zero carbon footprint, and actually absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
Ancient Rome is one of the most well-studied civilizations on Earth, but there are some aspects of the culture that still puzzle researchers today. Among the oddest mysteries the Romans left behind are small, hollow dodecahedra— 12-sided objects — with no apparent purpose. These dodecahedra are usually about the size of a human fist or a baseball, although the ones that have been found by archaeologists range from1.5 inches to 4.5 inches tall. Each pane typically contains a differently sized hole between .2 and 1.5 inches wide, and each corner is marked by a spherical stud. The first one was unearthed in 1739, and more than 100 have been discovered since then, mostly around ancient Britain, Gaul, and Roman Germany.
Despite having nearly 300 years to figure it out, archaeologists still aren’t even close to sure what the Gallo-Roman dodecahedra are for, but they do have some wildly disparate ideas. The objects could have been used for a game that’s disappeared from the historical record, for detecting counterfeit coins (some of them were even discovered in coin hoards), or as surveying tools. Names for the zodiac were found on one dodecahedron, leading some to believe that they could be used in astrology. Other ideas include a musical instrument, candle holder, child’s toy, calendar, or a gauge for water pipes.
Original photo by Joseph Sohm/ ShutterstockAlaska’s flag was created by a 13-year-old.Every flag has a story, but few are as endearing as Alaska’s. One of the rare places to have a flag before it was actually a state, the Last Frontier held a contest to design its territorial standard in 1926-27 — and a 13-year-old won. (The contest was only open to Alaskan children in the seventh to 12th grades, but still.) Benny Benson lived in an orphanage known as the Jesse Lee Home in Seward, Alaska, when he came up with the winning design, which included a descriptionhe wrote himself: “The blue field is for the Alaska sky and the forget-me-not, an Alaska flower. The North Star is for the future of the state of Alaska, the most northerly in the Union. The dipper is for the Great Bear – symbolizing strength.” His design also featured “1867” in commemoration of the year the United States bought Alaska from Russia, although the numbers didn’t make the final cut.
In addition to being hailed as a local hero, Benson won a watch with his design on it and a $1,000 scholarship. He eventually used that money to attend Hemphill Diesel Engineering School after moving to Seattle in 1936. He was 45 when Alaska became a state in 1959, fulfilling the hopeful description of his design. Alaska kept its flag rather than adopt a new one, and Benson’s work lives on today.
Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void 
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