Old Sailors' Almanac - Week 02, 2021 (Fluid Design based on percentage of screen platform

Theodore Roosevelt makes Grand Canyon a national monument on January 11, 1908

Theodore Roosevelt makes Grand Canyon a national monument: On this day in 1908, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declares the massive Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona a national monument.

Though Native Americans lived in the area as early as the 13th century, the first European sighting of the canyon wasn’t until 1540, by members of an expedition headed by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Because of its remote and inaccessible location, several centuries passed before North American settlers really explored the canyon. In 1869, geologist John Wesley Powell led a group of 10 men in the first difficult journey down the rapids of the Colorado River and along the length of the 277-mile gorge in four rowboats.

Congress did not officially outlaw private development in the Grand Canyon until 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Grand Canyon National Park Act. Today, more than 5 million people visit the canyon each year. The canyon floor is accessible by foot, mule or boat, and whitewater rafting, hiking and running in the area are especially popular. Many choose to conserve their energies and simply take in the breathtaking view from the canyon’s South Rim–some 7,000 feet above sea level–and marvel at a vista virtually unchanged for over 400 years.

In January 1908, Roosevelt exercised this right to make more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon area into a national monument.

“Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is”, he declared. “You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.”

History Channel / Wikipedia / Encyclopedia Britannica / National Parks Foundation.org / National Constitution Center.org / National Park Service.gov / PBS / Smithsonian / Theodore Roosevelt makes Grand Canyon a national monument on January 11, 1908 (YouTube)

This Day in History January 11

• 1787 William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.

• 1861 American Civil War: Alabama secedes from the United States.

• 1863 American Civil War: Battle of Arkansas Post: General John McClernand and Admiral David Dixon Porter capture the Arkansas River for the Union.

• 1863 American Civil War: Action off Galveston Light: CSS Alabama encounters and sinks the USS Hatteras off Galveston Lighthouse in Texas.

• 1942 World War II: Battle of Kuala Lumpur: Japanese forces capture Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the Federated Malay States.

• 1942 World War II: Battle of Tarakan (1942): Japanese forces attack Tarakan in Borneo, Netherlands Indies.

• 1949 The first “networked” television broadcasts took place as KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania goes on the air connecting the east coast and mid-west programming.

Wikipedia.org

Understanding Military Terminology

Point Defense

(DOD) The defense or protection of special vital elements and installations; e.g., command and control facilities or air bases.

Joint Publications (JP 3-52) Joint Airspace Control

Pointee-talkee

A language aid containing selected phrases in English opposite a translation in a foreign language used by pointing to appropriate phrases.

The Old Salt’s Corner

“Tales of Legendary Ghost Ships”

Legend of the Ghost Ship Palatine Light - Every winter Block Islanders can spot the ghost of the flaming ship Palatine, or so the legend goes.

The tale comes from the true story of a British vessel that ran aground on Dec. 26, 1738, and from the bad reputation Block Islanders earned for looting wrecked ships.

Sailors shook their heads when they spoke of Block Island, where wreckers lured ships ashore, killed their crews and divided the spoils.

“I would rather be wrecked anywhere than upon Block Island," became a common and significant saying in the forecastle or the midnight watch, when the dark mass of the island heaved in sight”, wrote Samuel Adams Drake in 1883.

Drake described Block Island as “a bank of clay, treeless and wind-swept, eight miles long, rising out of the ocean between Montauk and Gay Head, and lying nearest to Point Judith, on the Rhode-Island shore, from which it is about five miles distant.”

Located in the middle of busy shipping lanes, Drake called the island a 'veritable stumbling-block in the way of the anxious navigator.'

The Stories

Like the Flying Dutchman or the Ghost Ship of Salem, the legend of the ghost ship has endured for centuries.

In 1811, Dr. Aaron C. Willey, a Block Island resident, described the Palatine Light. He first saw it in February 1810.

“It was large and gently lambent, very bright, broad at the bottom and terminating acutely upward...

I saw it again on the evening of December the 20th. It was then small, and I supposed it to be a light on board of some vessel, but I was soon undeceived. It moved along, apparently parallel to the shore, for about two miles, in the time that I was riding one at a moderate pace.”

Benjamin Congdon, born around 1788, gave a typical Puritan explanation for the apparition, according to folklorist Michael Bell.

“About the burning Palatine ship... I may say that I have seen her eight or ten times or more. In those early days nobody doubted her being sent by an Almighty Power to punish those wicked men who murdered her passengers and crew.”

New England Historical Society / YouTube

“I’m Just Sayin”

“Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous,

who does what is right and never sins.”

~ Ecclesiastes 7:20

“Thought for the Day”

“In times like these,

it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.”

“If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong,

then 9 times out of ten it will.”

“Ever since I made tomorrow my favorite day,

I've been uncomfortable looking back.”

“I was never one who sought to make the small man tall by cutting off the legs of a giant.

I wanted to drag no man down to my size.

Only to preserve a way of life which might make it possible for me,

one day,

to elevate myself until I at least partly matched his size.”

~ Paul Harvey

“What I Learned”

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered,

you will never grow.”

~ Anonymous

Second Hand News: Articles from Week 02 - January 11, 2021 - January 17, 2021

Biden CIA pick led secret “Back Channel” negotiations for Obama's Iran deal • Biden braces for first 100 days to be hampered by likely Trump impeachment • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tells Republicans that President Trump accepts blame for the Wednesday violent takeover of the United States Capitol by his supporters

How Trump's ban opened Pandora's Box • Was the Capitol attack a coup, insurrection, or domestic terrorism? • FBI bulletin says armed protests are being planned for all 50 state capitols as inauguration looms: Report

Parler finds refuge registerting its domain and server hosted by Epik, an Internet webhosting company known for working with right-leaning websites

MOST READ: Mikhail Gorbachev says he knows who organized attack on Capitol • Talk radio owner threatens termination of conservative hosts who allege election fraud: Report • Intelligence analysts downplayed Chinese election influence to avoid supporting Trump policies, inspector finds Washington Examiner

Democrats Are Using The Recent Capitol Riot To Consolidate Power • A Short History Of How Anthony Fauci Has Kept Failing Up Since 1984 • Leftists Are Colonizing Red Towns Like Mine, And Local Republicans Are Clueless

Leftism Is A Luxury Good And Its Awful Price Will One Day Be Due • AOC: ‘White Supremacist’ Republican Lawmakers Would Help Crazy People Hurt Me • A Divisive Impeachment Will Only Make Trump A Martyr

MOST READ: The Biggest Gun Forum On The Planet Was Just Kicked Off The Internet Without Explanation • Uganda Just Nuked Facebook And Twitter For Election Interference, And Twitter Is Having A Meltdown Over It • TEN Times Democrats Urged Violence Against Trump And His Supporters • PBS Lawyer Called For Firebombing White House, Kidnapping Republicans’ Children • The Global Consequences Of The Tech-Lash Will Be Severe

Joe Biden Doesn’t Understand Why 74 Million Americans Have No Interest In His Unity Fake Facade • Big Corporate Uses Capitol Riots To Push Communist-Style Social Credit System On Americans • FLASHBACK: Just Months Ago, Democrats Blocked a Resolution Condemning Mob Violence • No, Donald Trump Did Not Incite An Insurrection • Twitter Hasn’t Suspended These Accounts Or Tweets That Openly Incite Violence • TWENTY EIGHT Times Media And Democrats Excused Or Endorsed Violence Committed By Left-Wing Activists The Federalist

CORRUPTION CHRONICLES: Left’s Hypocrisy on Violence EXPOSED, Election Roll CLEANUP, Where's The Special Counsels for Biden Scandals?

“Investigating the Investigators:” Department of Defense (DOD) to Release Al Qaeda Operative with Ties to 9/11 Terrorist from Gitmo

Judicial Watch Uncovers Documents Behind $1 Billion Mask Deal Between California and Chinese Communist Party Linked Company

With Hundreds of Potato Varieties in U.S. Government Spends Millions to Develop More Judicial Watch

CBS Bashes Maskless Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma Who Helped Protect the House During Siege • ABC Rips First Lady’s Statement on Capitol Attack, Ignores Condolences • ABC’s Good Morning America Gloats Over WNBA Team Pushing ‘Villain’ Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler. Out of Office

ABC & CBS Wail: Fawning Vogue Kamala Harris Cover ‘Disrespectful’, ‘Racist’ • Cancel Culture’ Killing ‘Forgiveness,’ Deepening Division • Conservative Leaders: Tech Companies Pose Existential Threat, Must Be Broken Up

• On MSNBC: Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell: Calling Capitol Breachers 'Rioters' Is 'Insulting to Rioters' - Heaven Forbid We Should Insult The People Who Burned And Looted Minneapolis And Numerous Other Cities Across The Country

The censors overstep.

Impeachment in haste.
Speaker Pelosi sets the impeachment vote Wednesday 13 January.

Republican House members fret Trump supporters and primaries in 2022.

Taiwan, a reliable ally, may be left bereft by Biden.
Beijing agitprop says tyranny is more efficient.
“New CIA head speaks Arabic and Russian, but will follow Biden policy (global warming ahead of all else?)”

Iran deal back on the table.
“My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices”
“In Afghanistan, a fractured state, Taliban demand zero American presence.”    John Batchelor (01/13/2021)

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: Who Is “The Real McCoy”?

This Prolific Inventor Helped Give Us The Phrase “The Real McCoy”

There are many stories about how we got this phrase. But there was only one Elijah McCoy - the real McCoy. Maybe.

The inventor held 57 United States patents, mostly related to the railway. His inventions, which were not headline-making outside the field of steam engines, were so associated with quality and good function that people began using “the real McCoy” to refer to quality products.

Like many other black inventors, McCoy faced racism and exclusion in his work, but his lengthy career was a successful one.

McCoy was born on this day in 1843 to George and Emilia McCoy, former slaves from Kentucky who had escaped to Canada on the Underground Railroad. After living in Ontario for several years, the family moved to Detroit following the Civil War. Elijah was educated in the city and in Edinburgh, Scotland.

He eventually came back to the States and ended up working for the Michigan Central Railroad. Although McCoy was educated as an engineer, writes the Canadian Railway Hall of Fame, the discriminatory management of the railroad thought a black man couldn’t be an engineer, and he was hired to work in the boiler room of trains as a fireman.

Then in 1872, McCoy invented and patented an automatic oiling device for the moving parts of steam locomotives, colloquially known as the “oil-drip cup”.

“McCoy’s patented device was quickly adopted by the railroads, by those who maintained steamship engines and many others who used large machinery”, writes the University of Michigan. “The device was not particularly complicated so it was easy for competitors to produce similar devices. However, McCoy’s device was an original development and, apparently, had the best reputation.” That may well have been how the phrase “the real McCoy” became popular, the university writes.

McCoy used some of the money from ventures associated with his first patent to continue inventing, coming up with mostly railway-related inventions but also an improved ironing board. He moved to Detroit from Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1882 with Mary McCoy, his wife, the railway hall of fame writes, where he consulted for firms and continued to come up with ideas.

When he was 72 years old, in 1916, he patented the “graphite lubricator” which was a mixture of graphite and oil that worked well in the period’s “superheater” locomotives, but he didn’t establish his own company to make some of his inventions until 1920. Unfortunately, he was greatly injured in a 1922 accident that also killed his wife, and, writes the railway hall of fame, he died in 1929 after suffering financial, physical and mental problems.

In recent years, McCoy’s legacy was honored when he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and when a patent office in Detroit was named after him. But his most widely known legacy—the “real McCoy” phrase - is less certain. Although some modern sources have attributed the phrase to him, the Canadian encyclopedia says the phrase’s origin story is unclear.

“Many have suggested that the phrase became common parlance among mechanical engineers who refused to install knockoff lubricators onto their locomotives, demanding instead the original McCoy design. However, parallel mythologies surround a number of other figures of the late 19th and early 20th century.”

There’s Charlie “Kid” McCoy and Joseph McCoy and G. MacKay and Co., a distiller which used “the real Mackay” as a promotional slogan. Maybe the most generous interpretation is to say they were all the real thing.

Smithsonian / Wikipedia / Biography / Mental Floss / Quora / Invent.org / Who Is “The Real McCoy”? (YouTube)

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

Rent-A-Crow: A sailor advanced to E-4 because they graduated top of their “A” school class. The Navy “rents” them for an extra year in return for promoting them. The term is also used of sailors who enlist in Advanced Electronics or Nuclear training tracks, as these also require a 6 year commitment.

Reveille: An announcement over the 1MC at 0600 local time, bugle call, trumpet call or pipes call, most often associated with the military; it is chiefly used to wake military personnel at sunrise. The name comes from “réveillé” (or “réveil”), the French word for “wake up”.

Rick, Ricky: A “recruit” or sailor-to-be who is still in boot camp.

Rickety Rocket: USS Richmond K. Turner (CG-20) Commissioned 1963, decommissioned 1995, sunk as a target 1998 by USS Enterprise Battle Group.

Ricky Boxing: Masturbation. The term is used in boot camp to refer to male masturbation. Compare “Ricky Fishing”.

Ricky Fishing: Masturbation. The term is used in boot camp to refer to female masturbation. Compare “Ricky Boxing”.

Ricky Forklift: A boot camp term for a dust pan.

Ricky Girlfriend: A male sailor's hand, used to masturbate.

Ricky Crud:

(1) A one-night sickness which sailors acquire in bootcamp after receiving their smallpox vaccinations.

(2) The constant cold that sailors suffer from in bootcamp because they spend 8 weeks confined with 80 people from all walks of life.

Ricky Dive: Fast, effective method of cleaning in boot camp, consisting of wearing smurf suits inside-out and sliding, or being dragged, on the floor to pick up dust.

Ricky Heaven: A number of restaurants and entertainment venues found in a single building at boot camp, so called because only graduates of boot camp may go there.

Ricky Iron: Using one's right hand to press one's uniform flat.

Ricky Lawnmower: Nailclippers, used to trim stray threads from uniforms. See “Irish Pennant”.

Ricky Ninja: Within minutes of lights out, the entire division is asleep, except for the Ricky Ninjas, dressed in their ski masks and sweaters, sliding from rack to rack, Gullivering, dirty-dicking, and spitting in the RPOC's canteen.

Ricky Ray-Gun: The cheap, disposable flashlights Recruits use while standing night watch in the barracks.

Ricky Sweep: Use of a bare hand to gather dustbunnies and other dirt from a deck.

Ricky Rocket: A boot camp “energy drink” made from an assorted mix of sodas, sports drinks, coffee, sugar and artificial sweetners used to help keep the recruit awake. Also known as “Go-Go Juice”. Or half a glass of coffee, half chocolate milk and a shit ton of sugar.

Wiktionary.org

Just for you MARINE

Request Mast: Appealing to increasingly higher links in the chain of command in order to seek satisfaction for a grievance the requester feels was not adequately handled at a lower level; DoN orders permit any Marine to request mast up to the individual's commanding general without repercussions.

Re-up: Reenlist, an Army term that has made its way into the vernacular for volunteering for an additional period of service. The correct term is Ship-over.

Reverse Raider : Derogatory term for MARSOC Marines, due to their reputed tendency to assume they are superior to regular Marines. Many in the Marine Reconnaissance community see MARSOC as wanting to emulate the Marine Raiders of WWII, which they are not meant to be.

RFI: Request For Information; Ready For Issue - Gear that has been repaired and placed back in supply.

RIP: Relief in Place. A common method of handing over an area to an incoming unit during deployment. A small contingent of the prior unit will stay with the new unit for a period of time to help acclimate them with the Authorizing Official (AO).

Wikipedia.org

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

HSC-9 Helicopter Sea Combat (HSC) Squadron NINE - nicknamed the “Tridents”

United States Navy Naval Air Station - Helicopter Sea Combat (HSC), Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia / Squadron Lineage: HS-3: June 18, 1952 - June 1, 2009 / HSC-9: June 1, 2009 - present.

Where Did That Saying Come From?

“A problem shared is a problem halved:”

Meaning: The proverbial saying 'A problem shared is a problem halved' expresses the idea that, when in difficulties it is useful to talk to someone about them.

History: Unlike the similarly worded “a penny saved is a penny earned”, the proverb “a problem shared is a problem halved” isn't especially old. The first use of it that I can find in print is in the English newspaper The Morecambe Guardian, November 1931:

“If she is married she still has the same problem [money worries] - though it is a happier one for, after all, a problem shared is a problem halved, and, at least, she has someone with whom to talk matters over.”

The expression crossed the Atlantic and began to be used in the USA after WWII. The first example of it that I know of there is in the Muncie Evening Press, November 1854. This uses the longer form:

“A problem shared is a problem halved. A joy shared is a joy doubled.”

Phrases.org UK

Science & Technology

Court rules “Dueling Dinos” belong to landowners, in a win for science • Hungry bumble bees make plants flower early by cutting holes in their leaves • Defective immune cells could make us old • Doctors race to understand rare inflammatory condition associated with coronavirus in young people • Countries around the world are rolling out contact tracing apps to contain coronavirus. How will we know whether they work? Science AAAS

First commercial space taxi a pit stop on Musk's Mars quest • A stitch in time: How a quantum physicist invented new code from old tricks • Scientists solve half-century-old magnesium dimer mystery • Researchers discover cell reproduction not triggered by retinoic acid as previously believed Phys.org / MedicalXpress / TechXplore

Bizarre News (we couldn’t make up stuff this good - real news story)

Florida lizard breaks world poop record, dies constipated

Its gut was distended by a putty-like mass

A greasy, sandy diet left a northern curly-tailed lizard with a belly distended by a heavy ball of unpassable poop. The mass was so large that it made up nearly 80% of the animal's body weight - a record-breaking body-to-poop ratio, according to a Florida biologist.

As the lizard gulped down insects and other small reptiles near a pizza parlor in Cocoa Beach, Florida, it also swallowed particles of grease-soaked sand. Over time, the grains stuck together to form a lump that was too dense for the lizard to excrete, said Natalie Claunch, the researcher who found the lizard, and a doctoral candidate in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

And the more that the constipated lizard ate, the bigger the poop mass grew.

If only the unfortunate lizard had had that option. But by the time Claunch found the reptile, it was unable to excrete the tightly-packed, sandy mass. All nutrients had been sucked out of the dense ball in its gut, and the lizard was nearly out of room to eat anything more; it was slowly starving to death and was therefore humanely euthanized, Claunch wrote in the March 2020 issue of the journal Herpetological Review.

When Claunch picked up the pear-shaped lizard - a female - she recognized right away that the mass stretching its belly wasn't a cluster of ready-to-lay eggs.

“Eggs feel like large jelly beans, and you can feel them individually”, she told Live Science in an email. “This was a semisolid putty-like mass.”

Dissection showed that the lizard's internal organs were so squeezed that they had atrophied, particularly its ovaries and liver. The mass was so dense that it was even visible in computed X-ray tomography (CT) scans, said Edward Stanley, an associate scientist in the Florida Museum of Natural History's Department of Herpetology.

When Stanley performed the scans, he was “a bit nervous” about handling the delicate, bloated body “because it was so full”, he told Live Science.

“I was concerned that unless I was careful, I might pop it”, he said.

The lizard weighed about 1 ounce (28 grams), and the mass alone weighed 0.8 ounces (22 grams), or about 78.5% of the lizard’s total weight. This represents “the largest feces-to-body mass ratio recorded in a living animal”, Claunch reported. To put that into perspective, scientists previously documented a Burmese python (Python bivittatus), a species known for digesting enormous meals (and excreting huge poops), that produced a fecal mass representing a mere 13% of the snake's body weight, Claunch wrote.

Inside the bolus were the remains of an earlier meal - the skull of an anole, which are part of the lizard’s natural diet, said Stanley.

Northern curly-tailed lizards (Leiocephalus carinatus) are native to the Bahamas and other Caribbean islands; they were introduced in southeastern Florida in the 1940s, when a Palm Beach resident released several dozen of the lizards on his property to combat insect pests, said Hank Smith, a professor at Florida Atlantic University and a wildlife biologist for the Florida Park Service.

In the decades since their release, the voracious invading lizards have replaced many of the smaller native lizard species - some of which have become the curly-tailed lizards' prey.

“They're the T. rex of our little ground critters”, Smith told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 2006.

This isn't the first curly-tailed lizard with pervasive poop problems; Claunch and her colleagues have found three other individuals with fecal masses that were 30% or more of their body weight.

“We had actually found a curly-tailed lizard similar to this one the year prior, near the same location, with a fecal mass nearly 40% of its total body mass - However, it's unclear how long it may take these sand-packed masses to accumulate in a lizard's gut.”

“There is no good way to tell because we don’t have studies on 'normal' digestion in the species to compare to, yet”, Claunch said.

Images: Exotic lizards pop out of the ground in Florida

Photos: Gorgeous Shots of the Adorable Horned Lizard

Album: Bizarre Frogs, Lizards and Salamanders

Image Gallery: Acrobatic Tricks of Lizards & Robots

Live Science (05/14/2020)