On this Date in History, March 13, 1781

On this date, March 13, 1781 William Herschel sees what he thinks is a "comet" but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus.  Adolescent school boys have been giggling about the discover ever since.

6th grade boy's science project  poster of the what Uranus must look like.

Thar She Blows (Blowing Rock, NC)

This is the Blowing Rock of Blowing Rock, North Carolina.  It is located at the peak of a cliff, which is shaped sort of like a horseshoe, the rock being in the center of the curve of it.  If you walk up to it you can hear the wind blow against it.

Remember in front of it is a big valley.  I think if you read Sam Carsley's and My Big Adventure With Paper Airplanes over the Etowah Valley side of Allatoona Dam you would understand perfectly why the wind does this.

Time Jumping

On THE TODAY SHOW this morning they announced that tonight, the last minute of June will have one additional second.  They went on to say that each day the real time is shorted by a fraction of a second and ever so often when enough fractions add up to be a whole, they tack an extra second on the end of the month to make everything, time-wise to work out.

It is like a time warp, or time traveling.

Then I wondered if actually rearranging seconds might after a terrible effect on the human race I got my Ouija Board out and called up a conference séance with Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton.  I told them the problem of humans monkeying with real time and would there be any bad consequences.

They both chuckled and called me a few names that was in a foreign language and laughed again, harder.

I didn't wan to look stupid so I laughed too, and that caused them to laugh so hard they started coughing.

They gave me this advice:  At the final bonus second at the end of June jump  up in the air.  Being in midair you will escape the time consequence.    When you land you will  land in the first second of July, so you will not be effective.

Close Up Picture of Uranus

It has been a top secret but now with a successful mission it can be told:  NASA has created a special  flying machine that can fly close to planets and take pictures of them, which is not new, they have equipment that can do that, but that type is so expensive.  This one does a sketch of what it sees, it is much cheaper.   Recently it made a trip to Uranus.  Above is the picture it sent back

This is the Lake Allatoona side of Allatoona Dam.  I took this when our son Adam gave me a lake tour as a gift.

If you were on top of the dam and looking down the other side you would see a huge cement cliff and many feet below is the Etowah River.  Over to the right of the river you would see a brick structure which is the remaining ruins of Cooper Furnace which was in full operation before the Civil War. 

AND!!! If you look  up in the sky you might see a few folded paper airplanes floating lazily down until they get too close to the edge of the damn and the west wind coming up the Etowah River hits the dam and go the only way it can, which is up, and scoops up the paper air planes and carries them high above the dam until it lets go and the planes start their floating back down again, maybe for all eternity.

My late friend Sam Carley and I launched the paper airplanes back in about 1961 and they were in their eternal routine before we left.  Sam was a Georgia Tech student and we were working out of his experiments.  *


*If you read this blog regularly,  you already know this, I have told of this scientific experiment  several times.

Another scientific experiment we made:  The theory of relativity  in its simplest form is that if you are  on a bus and jump up in the air you will land on the same spot you left the floor at.  It seems the bus should have moved out from under you so to speak.  But the reason it doesn't is that you are traveling the same speed forward the bus is, even when you jump straight up.  Sam just bought a used Chevvy green and white convertible.  He suggested we ride normal speed, throw a beer can up in the air and stop suddenly.  We did and WHOMP!  The full beer can put a dent on his hood. 

HAPPY 1st DAY OF SUMMER!!

Do you know today is the first of Summer?   Today the solstice comes to the perfect tilt of the Earth that also creates the longest day of the year.  By "Longest Day" I do not mean the day is longer than 24 hours.  I meant there is a longer span of dayight.  However the Summer Solstice does not come to the perfect tilt with the right degrees until the evening, after most of the daylight time has been spent.  Does that mean today is the longest daylight day or tomorrow?   Oh me, I'm confused.

Billy Beane and Alfred E. Newman

We rented the movie POWERBALL with Brad Pitt.  It was not bad, educational, and interesting on how professional baseball players are selected.  I thought it was fast pace or rapid type of decisions made like literally snapping your fingers kind of movie.

The movie is based on true facts of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletes managing career and his sudden shift to look at players’ statistics and even computerizing the statistics that accurately predicting what any player will likely to do next.

Thus, he had to face-off with his scouts and mangers the gut-feeling  of the old and the new scientific statistical base method.  His job was on the line and  he won.  His team broke winning records.

This movie reminded me of story in MAD Magazine issue #25, that was published in 1955.  It is strange that MAD was writing about it in 1955 and the movie took place in 2002, forty-seven years later and both similar.    Al Jaffee got credit for writing the story and Jack Davis drew it.

 (psstt!  click on each image below to read it.)



On This Date March 9th:

1954 Edward R Murrow criticizes Senator Joseph McCarthy (See it Now).

1961 Sputnik 9 carries Chernushka (dog) into orbit

Solstice - Magic In the Air!

Today is Solstice. Today is the first day of of Winter. It is also the shortest daylight period of the year. Some believe you can stand an egg on its end today and it will stay that way. That is the truth! If you don't believe me just look at the picture below.

Red Head and Red Nose Genes.

In the comments section of the previous post my first cousin Johnnny Hunter said that he had two red-headed grandchildren.

I don't know if those are Hunter, Frasure, or Mlford genes but I see the possibility that they Hunter genes. We have a Hunter cousin Alice who is red-headed.

My mother's side of my family is full of red-heads.

That probably means I am packed with red-headed genes. Also Anna has some red-headed first cousins, so she probably is red-headed genes too. Which means, our two sons are likely to be packed with red-headed genes.

From my mother's side are also genes to have a red-nose which I have. My nose is as red as Rudolph's.

Down the line someplace in my descendant line is a child waiting to be born with red-hair and a red-nose.

He or she will look like a cross between Carrot Top and W.C. Fields.

Another Carrot Top?

Congratulations to Paul Roper and his family. He told me yesterday earlier this week, Tuesday I think, his daughter gave birth to a child with lotsa and lotsa of red hair.

I heard or read recently that Red heads are fading out. True! The gene pool for red hair is losing out to more dominant gene pools. The article said in another 50 or so years there will no more red headed people being born.

That may not be true if the Roper family has any say about it.

I'll Tell'ya About Tellus

Yesterday, on my birthday, Anna treated me with a visit to the Tellus Museum in Cartersville, Georgia.

The Tellus Museum is several museums in one: The planetarium; the mineral museum; the giant prehistoric creature museum; the men in motion section showing a good wrap up of man’s travel machines, such as antique cars, Wright Brothers aero planes, astronaut capsules, all electric cars, etc.; a mining for minerals section where you are given a mining pan and your dip your pan into the water and scoop up sand and shift around for a unique shiny mineral or something. And probably more I don’t remember.

The Tellus is just off the I-75 in Cartersville. When you turn into Tellus Drive you have probably a half mile or so of a pleasant drive with a lot of well sculptured trees and bushes. As you enter the parking lot you see there is about as much, if not more, parking space allotted for school buses as for private vehicles.

In the lobby there is a big pendulum in the lobby that swings back and forth in very long strides making a slight change in direction each time. The slight change in movement is credited to the earth’s gravity pull and the earth’s rotation. Right in the path of the swinging pendulum is a huge circle of little wood blocks, about the size of domino tiles. Every 21 minutes it moved just enough to knock another one down.

I wondered how they down set them back up when they are all knocked down. It kind of reminded me of the old bowling ball alleys where a “pin boy” would hop out and put the bowling pins back upright. It also reminded me of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum.

You pay according to what you are: student, senior citizen, etc, and how many of the planetarium shows do you want to catch. There are four shows, each with a different theme, like planets, the constellations with Greek mythology, beyond our solar system, and Big Bird. We skipped the Big Bird show.
We went to three of the planetarium shows. I noticed in each show the narrator would give a quick run down of the planets in our solar system and show how you can quickly locate them with your naked eye. They are all in a row. If you can spot Venus you can see directly to the left Mercury, Mars, and on in order as they are from the sun. I didn’t know that… that you could see them all in a line like that, and actually confuses me a bit – aren’t we suppose to be in that line too?



I also wondered what the reaction would be around me, sitting in the dark, if, when each time the narrator named off the planets when she said “Uranus” I burst into a giggle… being likely the oldest looking person there, I’m sure it would cause some stares.

In the mineral section displayed many types of stones and minerals. It also had a lot of visual educational displays about mining and what we use in our food and medicinal supply, which we couldn’t live without, that came from mining. This reminded me that Cartersville always has mined stuff since I remember. Every time we drove by Cartersville in the old days you could see high hills, stripped which we assumed to be mining operations. Is this section the city defending itself?




Also, while we were in the mineral section we sort of fell in step with a crowd of young kids, all with the same color t-shirts, who were listening to a museum docent explain to them about different type of rocks and minerals. It was interesting. I wondered if I should raise my hand and ask permission to go to the bathroom.





The prehistoric giant creature section was very good. There was one giant skeleton of a mole looking creature that was found in a nearby mining cavern. It was about the size of a Winnebago. They had maybe eight or nine huge skeletons of prehistoric monsters. I think some of them were casts from the bones of the actual critters.

The Man in Motion section had quiet an collection of old turn of the century (1890s-1910s) cars, horseless carriages, one of the first airplanes, a space satellite, a helicopter, and more. Also in this same section is a small art show, with maybe 15 or 20 canvases on display. And also is a tub or well looking device with round walls with a hole in the bottom. The directions said if you put a coin in a lot above it will travel a unique path down to and through the hole. It said all money will go be donated to some worthy cause, I forgot what. I was searching in my pocket for a penny and a nearby guide pulled a quarter out of his pocket and demonstrated. Thank God, I was trying to decide about using a quarter myself. The man’s quarter went around and around the inner-wall of the tub, and each revolution would go a wee bit further forward. Each rotation would be a little shorter, as the wall got smaller as it went down. It was interesting to watch…with someone else’s money.

They had a type of make believe house with a make believe playhouse to attract probably toddler age kids. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time there.

We got to mine for minerals. In one of the rooms you are given a pan that you dip into sand at the bottom of a water trough and shift through it looking for shiny little minerals and things, maybe a button or a coin… not really, it was all minerals. Anna and I each found a nice number of little fragments of some pretty precious stones. Now, what do we do with them?

The dining area is void of any sign of a place that food is prepared or cooked. It is there, but just not in view. Looking around the room on the wall is a menu and on the menu are cooked things, such as hamburgers, hotdogs, and hot sandwiches. I asked the lady that worked there where was the kitchen. She said “behind that door – you tell me what you want and I’ll bring it to you.” Why hide a hint of a kitchen? I didn’t realize it but no kitchen with humans cooking takes something out of it.

It was a very interesting educational trip.




After that we went to Euharlee, Georgia, to eat at Johnny Mitchell’s Smokehouse. We arrived before 4:00 and thus were the only paying customers there. We were welcomed by everybody there, including Johnny. Johnny and I share the same birth date. The birth day boy (or girl) gets a free generous slice of a Coca Cola cake oozing with richness. I had a sampler platter with had smoked barbecued chicken, ribs, and barbecued beef. The beef and ribs were excellent. They had a strong spiced dry-rub smoke taste that is, well, just very good, if you don’t eat them every day. The chicken I cannot say yet, I was stuffed so I carried it home to eat today.

Just about a block away from Johnny Mitchell’s Smokehouse is the Euharlee Covered Bridge. The road going though the covered bridge has been detoured now the covered bridge is just for show. The bridge was built by a freed black man Horace King (1807-1885) in the mid 1800s during slavery. Before Horace was freed he helped his master build bridges and became more knowledgeable and better at it than his master. The master freed him and help get him started in his own business. He built regular bridges and covered bridges in west Georgia and in Alabama.





The next time we were in the area and had the time I wanted to look up something. I wanted to look up Allatoona Pass. A Civil War battle went on at Allatoona Pass. It was almost a century before Allatoona Lake was created. My great grandfather William A. Trammell/Hunter’s unit, NC 39th, Co. I fought at Allatoona Pass. I wanted to see for myself the layout of the land.

I have tried to find Allatoona Pass before and went to the wrong road. This time with guidance from the Red Top Mountain Park ranger I found it. I think the worse part of the battle is very deep in Allatoona Lake waters but around the edges are the markers and things. One thing I saw changed my thoughts. The fight took place in September 1864. That was about two months after William was shot in the knee during a skirmish at Kennesaw Mountain. After that he was sent to a private home near Woodstock, Georgia, recuperate, and he sat the rest of the war out. He couldn’t have fought at Allatoona Pass.

However! Up on a high spot near Allatoona Road is a grassy area that overlooks the lake and on the other side of the lake appears to be Allatoona Landing. Allatoona Landing is where one of William’s favorite grandsons, Herbert Hunter docked his boat, many years later…. I just thought that was almost coincidental.




High up on top of one of the mountains or ridges looming over Allatoona Pass and on top of Kennesaw Mountain, in top of a tree, Sherman’s men communicated with mirror reflections. Sherman would send them orders and they would report back what was happening. They were instantly relaying orders and news long before electronic gadgetry.

For the next phase of my birthday we will meet the family tonight.

The Big Bang is Today!

The Big Bang Test is Today

The Big Bang Theory is a set of events in the universe of certain chemicals mixing and colliding with each other created planets, and thus creating life – after the Big Bang changed to hot soup. That is my layman’s version.

Scientists in Geneva have built a huge machine to recreate the Big Bang underground today.

A small group of scientists are trying to prevent the Big Bang test, saying it could cause the Black Hole reaction, which would suck everything in the world into it, thus ending all forms of life on Earth.

The pro-Big Bang today scientists are saying in so many words, “Aw, poo! The percentage is very small something like that would happen!”

The percentage is very small? That means there is a certain percent chance it will happen.

The anti-Big Bang today scientists are saying they are dealing with unknown stuff they have never dealt with before – and forces unknown might set off the Black Hole chain reaction.

So, today might be our last day on Earth.

There are some things I am wondering about:

(1) should I go off my diet and pig out today? If I wake up tomorrow, I can always go back on it.

(2) I can take my charge cards and purchase all little electronic gadgets that might cause me instant gratification… and of course return them the next day, if there is a next day.

(3) Forget about our long-term Roth IRA mutual funds.

(4) See if I can get an advance on our life insurance policies because we or they won’t be around for the transaction later – but that doesn’t mean they are still obligated to pay up!


It the Scientists in Geneva have already conducted their underground Big Bang Test and no Black Hole was instantly created, then, Never mind!

Blowing Rock, NC postcard

One Fall we went to Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It was a very scenic trip.

While in the area we also went to Grandfather Mountain. I was interested in seeing the whole area, which covers Boone and Burke Counties, NC. I have been in those counties before but not since I became interested in genealogy. For some reason I have yet figured out, I like to walk over the terrain of where my ancestors walked. It probably means I am nutty as I can be.

We spent a good while on Blowing Rock, which the tourist town is named. Indians said if you throw something off the big rock it just might come back up to you. I think they probably used more mystic terms.

I think I know why things might come back. The rock named Blowing Rock in on a high mountain chain ridge. It also at the inside point where two ridges from different directions meet, forming a V. Blowing Rock is inside the V, behind the point.

So you have wind coming from the west that gets corralled in the V, like in a funnel

And when it reaches the inverted point it cannot bounce back because the wind is still blowing behind it and the only way its force can go is up.

Years ago when my friend Sam was going to Georgia Tech once he and I went to Allatoona Dam to try something. Sam, with his study of aviation and physics was pretty certain if you sailed a paper airplane off the top of the dam the air draft would carry it up and keep it up. We tried it and it worked. A little notebook paper folded airplane stayed airborne for a very long time... well, long enough for us to lose interest... remember, I have a short attention span... so, maybe we left... it might still be there, about 30 to 50 feet over the dam lazily swooping up and down with the air currents.

Boy, were we smart!!

They Can Create Any Kind of Dog

A week or so ago on the National Geographic channel had an article about the generic engineering of dogs.

They said, and showed of course, that about 90% of the different breeds of dogs were not around 200 years ago. They came with the industrial revolution. They are human designed and produced.

The humans have purposely bred certain breed of dogs with a certain other breed of dog to get a certain live product. It may take several generations of breeding to get what they were planning. Some dogs were bred to hunt small game others big game. Others to be smellers to smell things out – bloodhounds come to mind; racing is another. Of course, we can not overlook the rescue dogs in the Alps with their little kegs of rum.

In the article they had a Russian man who bred dogs to smell for bombs at the airports in Russia. So far, they have been 100% right. He has a dog crew of about 40 and it took him years and years of cross breeding to come up with the perfect bomb sniffer.

There are dogs that herd, dogs that do smart things, dogs that lead the blind, and dogs that lie around and take it easy like Willow – except when she wants to gallop at high speeds all over the yard…. Incidentally she is part Whippet, I think she was designed to race.

On the National Geographic program a genetic engineer showed all these formulas on a print out, that made a dog what it was…. And how some of the chromosomes (whatever), could be lost or gained for the next generation… one set might represent hair color, another eye color, and another teeth alignment.

Which brings to mind – knowing the greed of the human race I bet there is group of scientists right now engineering a dog to have er-human like features…. Maybe some chromosomes will make it have a short snout, maybe another chain of chromosomes will cause it to be hairless, all but head full of blond hair, or maybe a red head… then, another combination would eliminate most of the 6 or 8 teats a dog has leaving only two, but all the others teats that are not there, the physical matter would gather in the two remaining ones… of course, the lips would be fuller, and engineered to hold lipstick.

It would take a special store to sell these dogs, a store for a certain kind clientele. – maybe a lot of low lights and maybe loud music and a strobe light.




Now is the time to get in on the ground floor. You will be rich in no time! Send me your money, I will see it is invested in the right breeders.*

*Preferably in unmarked bills.

Abe's & Charles' Birthday

David Parker is a history professor at Kennesaw College. His blog Another History Blog this morning was a Happy Birthday salute to Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. They were both born this date in 1809. The scientific community and the world politics have not been the same since their doings - which is a good thing.

Expieriments with Physics

Allatoona Damn

A friend I grew up went to Georgia Tech. He majored in physics.

For a while he, as a student, he was quiet taken away with the mathematical physical science of objects, which led to a few experiments.

Once he wondered what would happen if one shot a shaving cream compress canister. Would it spew out, or would it take off like a rocket spewing or what? So, we bought a new can of shaving cream and we got my .22 rifle and we went out in the woods. We put the canister on top of a stump and shot it. I don’t remember, but I would guess that it probably took several shots before we hit it. But when we did, the compressed cream did shoot out and the can did not stand still. The can almost suspended itself in midair and it spun. When I saw it spinning in midair, leaving a trail of liquid soap around and around it made me think of a galaxy.

Our second experiment, my friend was curious if we took a stack of note book paper up to Allatoona Lake Dam and made paper airplanes and throw them off the dam itself, what would they would do. It is a big dam. I don’t know how it compares to the Hoover Dam, but it is huge. One side is Allatoona and on the other side is an almost straight down cement cliff that must be several hundred feet down. It seems that way anyway. And at the bottom is the Etowah River which flows by Cartersville, the Etowah Indian Mounds, and then Rome, Georgia. I don’t where it goes then. The Etowah River is at the bottom of a very long valley. And at the dam interrupts the valley. It is windy on top of the dam. The wind is carried down the valley, almost like funnel, hits the dam and then goes the only place it can -straight up. We made a few paper airplanes and threw them off the edge. With the wind coming down the valley, then hitting the dam, and turning vertical and shooting upward was what he had in mind. Each airplane seemed to stay airborne a very long time, before it got knocked off the route of the upward wind constant blast. One paper plane may be still there. We got tired of watching it and left with doing what it has been doing for over an hour. It would go high, then out of reach of the upward wind, then fall down, and the wind would catch it and up it would go again. Over and over. Ho-hum.

The third experiment, my friend bought a 57 Chevvy convertible to do his share in a car pool of other Tech students. It was two-tone aqua and white. He came by to show me his car, it was clean and did not have a dent or scratch on it. We went for a ride in it with the top down. We had a few cans of beer. I don’t remember why, but we got onto an old dirt road out near Dallas, Ga. That road is a place we regularly went and parked our cars, and walk through a little clump of woods to slip into the Dallas Drag Strip. At the moment my friend was taken away with Einstein’s Theory of Relatively (E=MC2). I know, I know, the 2 is supposed to be smaller. I asked just what the theory was about, in layman’s terms please.
He said in its simplest form, say you are on a bus, standing in the aisle. You mark an X on the floor where you are standing. Then you jump up and land. Where do you land? You land on the X. Shouldn’t you land several feet behind the X because the bus, more or less will travel out from under you, or at least it seems the X should travel out from under you. No, whether you know it or not, while you are standing there you are also traveling forward at the same rate of speed of the bus. So when you jump up, in midair you are also flying forward at the same speed of the bus. And on the other hand, if you should jump up in the air and the bus stops suddenly, you are still traveling but the bus isn’t, so you should land up several feet in front of the X, closer to the front.

So, I said, “You mean, if I throw this half-full beer can up in the air, the same time you suddenly stop, the beer can should land in front of the car?”

He confirmed that it should.

OK, lets try it!

On the count of three I threw up the beer can as straight up as I could and at the same moment he slammed on the brakes.

The beer can went up, then back down.

WHUMP!!!

The beer can hit his hood and put a mall dent on it.

So much for experiments.