Does the name Wham-O ring a bell?

How about Whirlo-Way or Pluto Platter? Well, those were the two early 1950 names given perhaps the most famous... most simple toy ever invented... but it didn't take off (pun intended) right away. The inventor, World War II fighter pilot Fred Morrison, created the disc that he later licensed to Wham-O Manufacturing Company. When Wham-O marketed the Pluto Platter in 1957, they called it the Frisbee after an East Coast pie company who's plates had been used for just that purpose. And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, you know the rest of the story. Frisbee's sales soared (another pun...get it?)  into the hundreds of millions, and it became a counter-culture phenomenon, often seen in the hands of movie stars and famous personalities.

"It is impossible to fathom the impact Fred Morrison has had on the world through the invention of such a simple object..." said the executive director of the World Flying Disc Federation, a non-profit governing body for all competitive things Frisbee. (Aside: My brother-in-law was a card-carrying member #162 of the International Frisbee Assoc. in 1968... he showed me the card!  It shows you, among other things, he is pretty old.... and still a kid at heart,)

As a teen, Morrison had a fascination with flying disks, throwing popcorn lids and cake pans on the Santa Monica beach. One time, a stranger watching offered to buy his cake pan for a quarter. "At that time cake pans cost about a nickel," he wrote in his memoir... and a business was born, then interrupted and almost killed-off by World War II. His P-51 mustang was shot down over Italy in 1945 and he was a POW until the war's end.

Using the aerodynamic knowledge he acquired as a pilot, he refined his model and gave demonstrations at county fairs and stores selling his product. Often, amazed onlookers supposed the disk's unusual flight was caused by unseen wires. He became frustrated when purchasers couldn't get the same results he did because people just didn't know how to throw it. He began printing instructions on the bottom of each "Pluto Platter" which he manufactured, with little bumps, to simulate the "flying saucers from space" that had the public's attention at the time.

Tired and disappointed by a lack of consumer enthusiasm, he licensed the Pluto Platter  to Wham-O in 1957. It was Wham-O that came up with the Frisbee name. "I thought it was stupid," he said.  But it sold... and sold... and sold. And still does. I found seven in my house just today... four for throwing and three purchased as dog toys.

Morrison died this past week at age 90... but his Frisbee will live forever.

What is the largest machine in the world?

No. It's not my toaster which I bought cheap. It's really 18-inches square... pretty big for a toaster.  But it's not that.

It is the Large Hadron Collider, (left: blogger's guess of what it might look like.... but probably not. May not be to scale) built to unlock the deepest secrets of the universe. (Of all the stars and sky we see-- millions of light years into space-- we see less than 4% of the universe's total mass.) This machine, built 300-feet underground near the Swiss/French border,  is basically a connected 17 mile circular tunnel. It contains two large tubes lined with powerful magnets and is helium-cooled to near absolute zero. It's sole purpose is to slam two infinitely tiny particles the size of the center of an atom (and yes, they are way too small to inscribe the Lord's Prayer on. You are, no doubt, thinking of the head of a pin) into each other at almost 186,000 miles per second. (This translates to going around the 17 mile loop 11,000 times per second.)

The cost is modest-- but only if you compare it to all the money in the world-- $10 billion. It's purpose is to try to recreate the Big Bang that scientists believe made our universe happen a mere 13.7 billion years ago. This is so sci-fi-incredible that some physicists say, if we are wrong in our calculations, this could trigger the destruction of earth.  But enough of this happy talk.

Some impressive work has already been done by an atom-smasher in the U.S. The pipsqueak 2.4-mile-wide Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven, NY has smashed two super cooled, high-speed atoms into each other to create a temperatures of 7.2 trillion degrees-- 250,000 times hotter than the sun's core.

But really, how hot is 7.2 trillion degrees?  Well, the human body is 98.6 degrees; iron's melting point is 2,800 degrees; the Sun's core is 27 million degrees; a supernova is 180 billion degrees; one microsecond after the Big Bang, 7.2 trillion degrees; one millionth of a microsecond after the big bang, 18,000 trillion-trillion degrees.  I just can't imagine how long it would take to toast a marshmallow, but if you are an impatient sort, your s'mores are ready when you are.

Remember physicists, plenty of sun tan lotion... and wear those shades. (Seriously, pretty mind-boggling. Right?)

This could be your lucky year... with an asterisk*

*you gotta die to win.

Here in the U.S. on January 1, the estate tax, which has to be paid at death (so why am I worried about it?), has expired (er, excuse the word... been suspended) for one year. If you are/were rich enough (again, why am I worried), and died before the new year arrived, Uncle Sam could take as much as one-half of your estate's value. So as the new year approached, some families were playing God/Midas... "Do we keep Uncle Otto's respirator going until the stroke of midnight or do we pull the plug?"

Actually, that was possibly true in very few cases, and possibly only humorous if you are not Uncle Otto or his family. (In this blog, gallows humor is allowed... "Is that the best noose you can tie, you pathetic excuse for a hangman? I'd worry about you if I was your mommmmmm.... SNAP...argggh... swing.")

Anyhow, I have guaranteed that I will not die before my money runs out. I just shorten the death date guestimate on my financial plan to match my remaining dollars. See... it's win-win.

How to save New York

The New York Times asked a few of its prominent citizens for their new year resolutions for building a better New York:

Elliot Spitzer, former governor, attorney general and alleged prostitution solicitor said "I would love to see investment bankers actually do God's work." Gotta start somewhere, I guess.


Keith Nelson, founder of Bindlestiff Family Cirkus (yep, that's the korrect spellling) said "...the city should open a unicycle lane and special unicycle access to every bridge in New York."

Robert Burck, The Naked Cowboy of Times Square said "I'm waiting for the city to put my new product line into the Times Square retail center that's coming. So far, we've got Naked Cowboy shot glasses, Naked Cowboy T-shirts, Naked Cowboy protein powder and a Naked Cowboy tequila. It would also be nice if they could open up a Times Square wedding chapel. I'm an ordained minister.  It's a multimillion-dollar industry. Why let all those people to to Vegas to be married by an Elvis impersonator when they can do it in a unique way, right here in New York, by either myself or one of my licensed franchisees?"

In all fairness, there are other resolutions that read a little different. These three might just be a good starting point.

The real "Rain Man" dies...

... and he was incredible!

Remember the movie "Rain Man" with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise? It was based on an autistic savant who couldn't deal with the demands of daily living but was gifted with the extraordinary powers of memory that a small number of otherwise mentally disabled people possess, perhaps as a side effect of their disability. It won four Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor--Dustin Hoffman, Best Original Screenplay for its two authors) and wowed audiences who typically asked, "Is that for real?"

Well, it was.

Kim Peek died last week at age 58. According to the New York Times, "Peek was not autistic -- not all savants are autistic and not all autistics are savants -- but he was born with severe brain abnormalities. He could not dress himself or brush his teeth without help. He found metaphoric language incomprehensible and conceptualization baffling."

Yet, Peek not only taught himself to read but could, with astonishing speed, read facing pages of a book at once -- one with each eye -- and remember everything he read... in all of the 12,000 books he did read! He possessed a wide range of interests and expertise in math, chess, art and music. He could answer diverse questions on history, sports, geography and movies. He knew every calendar date specifically and all the ZIP codes in the U.S. as well as the TV stations serving those ZIPs.

He was better than Mapquest as he knew all the roads and mileages. If you asked him how to get from Toledo to Tupelo, he could not only give you the route but tell you all the things you would see on your way.

He knew classical music... every detail of every composition... and in mid life, taught himself to play it. He knew it so well that his father had to stop taking him to performances... as a stickler for accuracy, he would correct the actors or the musicians. "He'd stand and say" 'Wait a minute! The trombone is two notes off,'" his father recalled.

He knew Shakespeare... oh, yeah.  "He was the Mount Everest of memory," said an expert on savants who knew Peek for 20-years. And he never used computers.

When he was nine-months-old, a doctor judged him so severely retarded, he recommended the boy be institutionalized since he would never walk or talk. At age six, another recommended a lobotomy. By that time, however, he had read and memorized the first eight volumes of the family's encyclopedias. So much for the lobotomy.

Dustin Hoffman (who spent time with Peek to learn his characteristics, movements and utterances before the filming), accepting his Oscar for the portrayal of Raymond Babbitt (the name used in the movie), thanked, then gave it to Peek. Peek carried it with him to public appearances for the next 21 years. His father estimated that some 400,000 people have hugged that Statuette. "We called it the world's best-loved Oscar."

Kim Peek... hmmm. That name rings a bell.

How much is that in real money?

I remember spending all day one summer Saturday when I was about eight or nine-years-old, collecting, with the help of my best friend, paper, scrap metal, bottles, etc., and taking it all, in my red Radio Flyer wagon, to the scrap iron junkyard, across the tracks, about a mile from my childhood stomping grounds.

We worked from hot morning through hotter afternoon gathering wagon-loads of stuff to sell at the junkyard. You see, it was my mom's birthday and I wanted to buy her a birthday card. (I know... "aaauw, isn't that just adorable?")

We watched, sweaty and disgustingly dirty, as our "golden cargo" was weighed. "OK boys," the junkman said. "That comes to 24 cents."  I couldn't believe it. All of our hard work had earned the enormous total of 12 cents each! (OK, so 24 cents in 'the olden days' would have been more in today's cents, but even then, it wasn't much.)

The card I coveted... the one with 'just the right message,' cost 15 cents. I can still remember, it had a rose on the front and some kind of mushy message inside. So here I am, a mess and still 3 cents short. But my buddy came through and made up the difference.

Bought the card, signed my name and proudly took it home to mom, who was napping on the bed at the time. I flopped beside her, proud and beaming. But before I could open my mouth, she flew off the bed and hollered, "JERRY! GET OFF... RIGHT NOW! YOU ARE JUST FILFTHY."

Fighting tears, I meekly pushed the card into her hands and said "Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you." Then I cried.

Well, I have to tell you, that 15 cent card was probably the most valuable 'real money' I ever had. It brought me a big tearful hug from mom, my favorite fried chicken dinner and special status for the next few days... until I did something kid-like and life went on.

I know that the less you have, the more it means. That's kind of what triggered this thought as I read today that Bank Of America is set to repay its $18.4 BILLION taxpayer subsidy. Now here's what I don't get... just a short time ago, BofA would have gone out of business if they didn't get the loan. Then, within months, they made it back and repaid. Well, good for them and us. But hey, how much is $18.4 billion in real money? Seems like it should take a longer time to generate that kind of cash and regain solvency than mere months. And where's the sweat? It's a non-attainable goal for almost all of us. One just doesn't live that long. I suppose it is the volatility of today's world, and it scares me.

I just know that my 12 cents earned probably meant more to me then than this $18.4 billion does to BofA today. And to us taxpayers who footed the loan, it's real money out of our pockets. What this really means, according to the Wall Street Journal and other experts in these kinds of matters, is that BofA can now, without government interference, again pay millionaires big, BIG bonuses and go back to life as usual.

Somehow along the line, I lost the concept of 'real money."

The glamor is gone...

Detroit... Motor City, is fading fast. Once it was the nation's fourth largest city with nearly 2 million people, today less than half that number... just 770,000, remain. Makes you wonder who is going to build all those cars? What cars?

The Week magazine notes one-third of Detroit--and nearly half its children--lives in poverty, and one-quarter of the adult population didn't graduate from high school. Unemployment just hit 29 percent and in July, the median home price was $7,100 (not a typo).

The good news though is that the murder rate in one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. has dropped 14 percent. The bad news, as summed up by mayoral candidate Stanley Christmas... "I don't mean to be sarcastic, but there just isn't anyone left to kill."

Sad.

I've got more good news and bad news...

First, the good news: More than half of the children born in the year 2000 (in the industrialized countries) will live to age 100. Born today in the United States, that baby could live to 104, according to a new Danish study of 30 countries... and the increase in life expectancy is still rising. We are all living longer with fewer disabilities and better health care.

Now, the bad news: Where the hell are we going to get all the money to support us old and older people? And don't even think about mentioning the movie, Logan's Run.

Milton Supman dies!

Actually, you DO know him. He changed his name to Soupy Sales. He was 83.

Who didn't like Soupy and his dogs, White Fang (the meanest dog in the world--so big and mean that he buried the neighbor's Volkswagan) and Black Tooth (the sweetest dog in the world)? The dogs were always represented by huge felt paws and characteristic barks and growl that almost sounded like talking.

Soupy gained popularity with kids and adults in the early 50's until Metromedia, which produced his show, failed to renew his contract in 1966. Gosh, was it that long ago?

He told jokes (Show me a giant rooster chasing a member of Parliament and I'll show you a chicken catch a Tory.) and was hit in the face with a pie... more than 20,000 times! (That's not my estimate.) In fact, the old pie-in-the-face bit was so popular that movie stars and other notables wanted in on the action. In one show, Frank Sinatra had just finished singing "A foggy Day in London Town..." when he got his.

Soupy was hit by so many pies that he was once called as an expert witness in the trial of a Navy sailor who threw a chocolate cream pie at his commanding officer.

One running gag had Soupy answering the door to the knock of an unseen visitor. He never knew who would be behind the door, but among the notables were Burt Lancaster, Fess Parker, Alice Cooper and, at least once, a topless dancer. It was his impromptu response that got the laughs. The show's formula was slapstick, lots of slapstick and more slapstick... and we loved it.

When FCC chairman Newton Minow, labeled TV as a "vast wasteland," Soupy told his audience to "Try me and see the best waste in town!"

Now he is off to lemon meringue heaven. Good-by Soupy.

Water, water, everywhere... but not a drop to drink

Who said Jules Verne wasn't a visionary?

In 1903, he wrote From Earth to the Moon... and it was made into an early silent movie with one scene showing the man in the moon's reaction to the rocket landing. Well, a mere 66 years later, we put a man (actually three) on the moon's surface. (Did you know that one young girl, who actually witnessed the Wright brothers' historic first flight, also saw the launch of Apollo 11, which took us there?)

This happened in less than one lifetime!

We long-ago proved we could do it any darned time we wanted to. Why just last week, we purposely crashed two rockets into the moon in our attempt to prove lunar water exists. I guess, if marketing holds true to its course, we will soon be bottling Aqua Luna for sale by the case.

As amazing as that is, it creates a real paradox of human resolve. How can man's accomplishments, which represent the glory and wonder of our intellect on one hand, also represent human folly on the other?

Having the technology, ability and means to find water on the moon is quite an achievement. Meanwhile, back on earth, every 15 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease due to lack of clean water and sanitation. One billion people on our planet will never have a drink of clean water... 2.5 billion people lack access to safe water. That is 2.5 billion of our 7 billion population-- about one out of every three of us. The implications are incredible. Really! Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

We can go to the moon, split the atom, divide one second into 60 million parts, define space to contain billions of stars and be at least six million light years wide, create a memory chip the size of a blood cell (1/2000 of an inch) that will hold more data that ever thought possible, transplant a human heart and double life expectancy for those born in the right country.

On the other, we have never learned how to feed or provide water for all the needy people of the world but have learned how to develop sophisticated methods to kill them. We can create the greatest plague mankind has ever seen, make a bomb so small that it can easily be concealed yet powerful enough to ravage a city, and take everlasting wars to the nth power in our quest to solve a problem. Humankind has an ego-based righteousness mixed with a lack of humility. We have determined man's greater good can only be found from one perspective... ours (no matter who 'ours' represents).

Are we great or what?

The three musketeers had it right: "One for all and all for one." To think that if we are on the lucky side, that's all that matters. Not a chance.

PS: The water facts came from Water.org, a non-profit organization founded by actor Matt Damon and Gary White. Go to that website. It will blow your mind.

Are you a Dvork or a Qwerty?

If you recognize Dvork or Qwerty, then you know those names refer to the keypad designs on any computer keyboard. I was going to add typewriter too, but some will ask, what's a typewriter? Typewriters were actually developed in the 1860s and have virtually disappeared with the growth of word processors.

Almost all keypads today are Qwerty (referring to the first six letters of the keyboard reading left to right). The Dvork keyboard is named after it's designer.

Originally, the first keyboards were arranged using the letters of the alphabet in correct order, but that soon proved to be unefficient. Keys jammed when struck in rapid succession.

The Qwerty keyboard was designed by placing the most commonly used letters apart from one-another. That's the way all of us learned, so today that seems most correct and easy.

Along came August Dvork, a professor of education at the University of Washington. He designed his layout in the 1930s, placing the most commonly used letters, like vowels, on the home row. The lesser used, like J, K and Q, were moved to less busy positions. He found that if a person typed 40 words-per-minute on a Qwerty keyboard, that same individual could commonly type at twice or greater speed with his system.

Then, he campaigned diligently to get his more efficient system to be the standard. And he did gain followers who swear by his system for valid reasons. There are a great many Dvork aficionado's who champion that cause and naturally, use Dvork keyboards. And so can you.

All of today's popular computers have a "Dvork" setting that will transform the Qwerty keyboard to Dvork with a change in the computer's preference settings. The letters on the keys will not change, of course, but the Dvork keystrokes will be the results of the key strikes. And, if you know how to 'type,' seeing the letters on the keys is not an issue. The rub is, you have to learn the system... no cheating by peeking at the letters printed on the keys, or get a bonafide Dvork keyboard. There are even apps that work on unbound iphones if that is your thing.

Is it a big deal? Some think so. Others, per the Wall Street Journal, aren't sympathetic. One wrote: "How's that Beta max tape player working for you?"

Which brings to mind the question: How did the order of letters of the alphabet become as we know them? Comedian Steven Wright theorizes, "Do you think it is because of that song?"

Guessing Game

How many times have you seen 'Its A Wonderful Life?' Me? Probably 23 or so. The movie turns when Uncle Billy, on a mission to deposit the money owed Mr. Potter, misplaces his deposit wallet. It is found by the evil-minded Potter who does not return it. BOO!

In Canada recently, a man on his way to the bank with $10,000 in cash in a similar wallet, forgot to zip it closed. A gust of wind ripped it away from him, scattering the bills everywhere.

Frantic, he hollered for help. Immediately, motorists and pedestrians scrambled to scoop cash from traffic, under cars, down the street. Impossible.

So, how much was recovered and how much found the pockets of others on the chase?

Answer: Every single dollar was recovered and returned! Not a Mr. Potter in the bunch... just a lot of human beings doing what most of us would do naturally.

Isn't it nice to hear a story like this once in a while?

I have been to the top of the Willis Tower many times...

... and perhaps you have too. If you don't recognize the name, maybe it is because the Willis Tower, until just now, was know as the Sears Tower in Chicago, the tallest building in the United States. The Willis Group, a very large London-based insurance broker, is the new owner. So goes another trademark location, the same as almost every newly named sports arena in American.

This, however, reminds me of one of the most interesting phenomena I have ever personally experienced. While riding down from the Sears Observation Tower on the 101st floor a number of years back, a strange thing happened. The large elevator had an active graphic display of its descent that was the outline of the number, 101. As the elevator ascended or descended, the 101 number would either fill with light, as if you were pouring milk into a glass, or empty in similar fashion.

There were probably 30 people in that elevator as it descended, never stopping, on it's 90 second ride to the street. Yet, the display started to empty, then, half way down, fill up again. All of us passengers knew the elevator never stopped, but every one of us fully expected the doors to open out to the observation area when it came to a halt. There was a big gasp of surprise as the doors opened to the street, then laughter as our senses had been completely fooled... like a magician making an elephant disappear... but for real.