Drink more Vaccinium macrocarpon!

     Vaccinium macrocarpon is a North American species of cranberry. Cranberry juice is a tart deep red drink that is commonly found in most grocery stores. Especially in its purest form cranberry juice is an amazing product. 

     Cranberries are regarded as a super food due to their antioxidant (substances that can prevent or slow damage to cells caused by free radicals, unstable molecules that the body produces as a reaction to environmental and other pressures) and nutrient content. 

     Cranberries usually aren’t eaten raw because they have a sharp sour and bitter taste; they are most commonly consumed as sweetened juice or blended with other fruit juices. They can also be found in different forms: powder, sauce, extracts, dried and supplements. 

     Cranberries are small, red berries native to the United States and Canada that grow on creeping, low-lying vines, and do best in peat-based soil and damp conditions. They are closely related to blueberries, bilberries and huckleberries. The United States is the world’s largest producer of cranberries with the state of Wisconsin leading in production. 

     Cranberry juice has many health benefits. Some people drink it to help prevent urinary tract infections, but it offers several other health benefits. 

     In addition to antioxidants, cranberry juice offers small amounts of several vitamins and minerals, and it's an excellent source of vitamin C which plays many important roles. A powerful antioxidant, it helps stop free radicals from damaging cells and DNA in your body. This may help reduce the risk of developing various diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and more. Vitamin C also helps you heal after injuries, produce collagen, absorb iron, and boosts your immune system. 

     An 8 ounce glass of cranberry juice has approximately 20 percent of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin E, which is essential for the health of skin, blood vessels, and heart. 

     Other antioxidants are mainly found in the skins of fresh cranberries. Since cranberry juice doesn’t contain the skins it has lower concentrations of these antioxidants. 

     Studies show that various ingredients in cranberry juice may improve heart health. There is growing evidence that the phytochemicals contained in cranberries play an important role in digestive health. Some chemicals in cranberries may help fight viruses and bacteria.

     For women the risk of heart problems increases after menopause compared to the risk in all other groups of people of the same age. Researchers found that daily cranberry consumption reduced total cholesterol, suggesting cranberry products might be useful dietary supplements after the menopause. 

     Are there side effects? Just as grapefruit contains compounds that may interfere with how the body absorbs some drugs, including some blood pressure medicines, some research has found that cranberry juice may interact with certain medications. 

     Canberries may intensify the effects of a blood thinner called warfarin and preliminary research suggests the possibility of interactions between cranberries and cyclosporine, flurbiprofen diclofenac, amoxicillin, ceflacor, midazolam and tizanidine. 

     People taking these drugs should talk to a doctor before using cranberry juice.

 

Further reading: Cranberries 101

Bank Account Hackers

Here are ways hackers can gain access to your bank account: 

 

ATTACK 

     SIM Swapping - SMS authentication codes are a problem for hackers, but they have a way around them and they don't even need your phone! They contact your network provider, claiming to be you and claim they lost their phone and that they'd like a transfer of their old number (i.e. your current number) to their SIM card. The network provider deletes your phone number from your SIM and installs it on the hacker's SIM. Once they have your number on their SIM card, they can circumvent SMS codes and when they log into your bank account, the bank sends an SMS verification code to their phone. They can then log in to your account. 

DEFENSE 

     To perform a SIM swap, scammers have to get your personal information in order to pass the checks, so always keep your personal details personal. 

 

ATTACK 

     Phishing is one trick is hacking the email accounts of solicitors and sending phishing emails from a previously trusted address. That makes scams hard to spot!

DEFENSE 

     If an email address looks suspicious, treat it with great caution. If the address looks legitimate but something seems strange treat it as suspicious! 

 

ATTACK 

     Keyloggers are a type of malware that record what you're typing and sends the information back to the hacker. If you go to your bank's website and type in your username and password, the hacker has all the information they need to break into your account!

DEFENSE 

     Install a good Antivirus and make sure it checks your system frequently. A good antivirus will sniff out a keylogger and erase it before it can do damage. 

     If your bank supports two-factor authentication, be sure to enable it because the hacker won't be able to replicate the authentication code even if they get your login details. 

 

ATTACK 

     Sometimes, a hacker will target the communications between you and your bank's website by what is called Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks...the hacker intercepts communications between you and a legitimate service. 

     When you send your login details, the hackers sniff out your details and steal them. They use a "poisoned DNS cache" which means that your bank's website address is cloned and goes to a clone site owned by the hacker. This cloned site looks identical to the real thing. 

 

DEFENSE 

     Never perform any sensitive activities on a public or unsecured network. Use your home Wi-Fi and when you log into a sensitive site, always check for HTTPS in the address bar. If it's not there, there's a good chance you're looking at a fake site. 

     If you need to perform banking or other personal activities over a public Wi-Fi network use a VPN service that encrypts your data before it gets sent over the network. 

  

ATTACK 

     Mobile Banking Trojans - Tricking Users With Fake Banking Apps. Crooks spoof an existing banking app by creating a perfect replica of a bank's app and uploads it to third-party websites. Once you've downloaded the app and you enter your username and password they are sent to the hacker. 

     Then there are mobile banking Trojans which aren't disguised as a bank's app; the Trojan scans your phone for banking apps and when it detects one, the Trojan puts up a window that looks identical to the app you just booted up. Hopefully, the user won't notice the swap and will enter their details into the fake login page which are then sent to the hacker. 

 

DEFENSE: 

     Never install banking apps from third-party sites! Real bank apps should have a lot of downloads.When downloading apps from an app store, if it has a very low number of downloads and little to no reviews it could be malware so avoid it. Be careful what permissions you give any app. For example, If a mobile game asks for permission with no explanation as to why it wants them, don't do 

 

Further reading: 

How to Protect Yourself Against Hackers (from the Minnesota Attorney General's office) 

 

18 Ways to Secure Your Devices From Hackers (Business News Daily)

 

Federal Magistrate Judge Karen Litkovitz

Magistrate Karen Litkovitz

     A few days back I watched a television program about the descendants of Pablo Escobar's hippos that are thriving in the Colombian wild today. Escobar had a private zoo on his estate with zebras, giraffes and four hippopotamuses that he illegally imported in the 1980s. 

     Hippos are notorious in their native Africa as one of the most dangerous animals to humans, but so far there haven't been any deaths attributed to hippo attacks in Colombia. 

     Not counting humans, which animals kill the most humans every year? Occupying the top spot is mosquitoes...they kill 725,000 per year through spreading diseases. Next is snakes (138,000 per year), followed by man's best friend, dogs. They account for over 59,000 deaths per year. 

     Something called Assassin Bugs cause 10,000 per year year. They are a benefit to gardeners because they feed on a wide variety of prey including other bugs, bees, flies, and caterpillars. Prey is captured with a quick stab with the bug's s long mouth parts. After being immobilized by a paralyzing toxin, the prey’s body fluids are then drawn through the assassin bug’s straw-like mouth parts. 

     Assassin bugs like to bite humans, too. They like to bite humans on the face near the lips and eyes (hence they are sometimes known as Kissing Bugs). Their feces can also spread a parasite that causes Chagas disease, a disorder that does damage to major organs and can be fatal if left untreated. It's estimated that 10,000 people a year die from Chagas disease. 

     Next on the list are scorpions which kill 3,300 people per year. Crocodials kill 1,000 people a year and elephants 600. 

     Hippos are next, killing about 500 people per year and the lion, which is probably the most likely animal that we would think would be the number one killer of humans, is only number 10 on the list, accounting for 200 humans per year. But, I have digressed. 

     The hippos in Columbia have a special distinction aside from being descendants of those that belonged to Pablo Escobar.

     With a growing recognition around the world of the personhood and rights of non-human animals, last October Federal Magistrate Judge Karen Litkovitz of Cincinnati located in southern Ohio ruled that in courts in the United States Pablo Escobar's hippos can be legally recognized as people. Words to describe the lunacy of this decision escape me.

Lieutenant Sorrell Booke, Who Knew?

     The Dukes of Hazzard was an action-comedy (actually, silly is a better description) television series that was aired from January 26, 1979 to February 8, 1985. 

     The show was consistently among the top-rated television series in the late 1970s (at one point, ranking second only to Dallas, which immediately followed the show on th Friday night schedule). 

     The show is about two young cousins, Bo and Luke Duke, who live in rural Georgia and were on probation for moonshine running. Their female cousin Daisy Duke, and other family (such as patriarch Uncle Jesse), have various escapades as they evade the corrupt law officers Boss Hogg and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane. They drove a customized 1969 Dodge Charger nicknamed the General Lee, which became a symbol of the show. 

     Jefferson Davis Hogg, known as Boss Hogg, was the greedy, unethical commissioner of Hazzard County and the county's political boss. A stereotypical villainous glutton, Boss Hogg almost always wore an all-white suit with a white cowboy hat and regularly smoked cigars. His namesake is Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America. 

     Boss Hogg was played by Sorrell Booke (January 4, 1930 – February 11, 1994, 64 years old), who performed frequently on radio, stage, television and film prior to his role in The Dukes of Hazzard.

     A humble, jovial, intelligent man, there was more to Brooke than the silly characters he portrayed on television. 

     Booke was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of a local physician. As a child, he entertained patients in his father's waiting room and began acting on radio at nine and was known for his impersonations. He won a radio contest for mimicking the voice of Adolf Hitler and appeared regularly as an actor on local radio stations.

     He attended Bennett High School and was valedictorian of the Class of 1946. Booke enrolled in Columbia University at 16 and performed in Shakespearean plays in the drama club. 

     He graduated from Columbia at 19 in 1949, and received a Master of Fine Arts at the Yale School of Drama. During that time he became fluent in five languages, including Japanese and Russian! 

     During his two years in the US Army during the Korean War, Lieutenant Sorrell Booke served as a counterintelligence officer where his linguistic skills were put to good use. 

     His actual efforts during the Korean War remain unknown, but generally counterintelligence efforts included debriefing returned and escaped American prisoners of war, observing terrain favorable to enemy and allied movements and keeping tabs on enemy intelligence efforts in Korea and Japan. 

     In 1960, after the military, Booke made his way to Hollywood, taking on several roles in film, including a roles in hit show MASH and Dukes of Hazard.

     Booke remained humble about his Army activities to the point that after he passed away of colorectal cancer in Sherman Oaks, California, many were astonished tast he had served in the Army in such a capacity. He is interred at the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California

Literal Thinkers

     Obtuse...not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect; not sensitive or observant; dull. 

     People may dislike being called "obtuse" but it is not, by standard, an insult. Instead it suggests a refusal to see something apparent to others, or a willful ignorance or insensitivity to the real facts of a situation. 

     At first I thought the person who e-mailed me complaining that comments are not permitted on this blog was being obtuse. Of course, you can comment. Just look at some of the posts...they have comments. My guess is that the person didn't know how to comment. You click on "no comments." I admit that may be confusing, but that's the way Blogger has it set up. 

     Another complaint was that everything they read here can be found, word for word, elsewhere by various sources on the web and that I "borrowed" the info and experiences from others...the posts on this site are not original. 

     Except for the part about "experiences" all that is pretty much true because you can find this information on other sites...here it is usually collated and condensed to make the posts shorter. 

     If the complainer had looked in the upper left hand corner they would have read, "If I find something interesting, informative, or silly, I post it here." It should be clear that anything posted here is something I found, not something I did original research on or personally experienced although in the specific post they complained about I mentioned an anecdote my father told me about my grandmother. 

     I was reminded of the time I was playing on an online chess site and was using as a handle the name of a long dead chess player. In one of the forums, a guy called me a liar for claiming to be that particular player because I'd be over 100 years old. He had actually searched the United States Chess Federation's rating list and only found a couple of players with the same last name, but they weren't very good. 

     The same guy also called out another poster when it was mentioned that a certain book on Boris Spassky was the one that Bobby Fischer used to carry around. This poor fellow went off on the person making the post because, as it turned out, he believed the poster was claiming that it was the actual book that was in Fischer's personal possession. When he finally understood that it was not the actual book, but a copy, he insisted that the poster cite the source for the claim. 

     Anyway, as I thought on the e-mail, I realized that "obtuse" is not the right word. Maybe "literal thinker" is. Literal thinkers are people who take into consideration what the words they speak and hear mean in concrete terms. 

     They tend to apply the most literal meaning to words, and have trouble seeing the big picture because they will focus on the details of each word. 

     They are people who are unable to consider figurative uses of words and, consequently, it can be frustrating for both the speaker and literal thinker when someone is trying to communicate with them because they simply do not think like most people.

     Literal thinkers are not all bad! They are likely to be better at understanding rules, utilizing concrete information, visualizing information and working through rule-based stuff such as math problems. Interestingly, literal thinkers usually do not engage in sarcasm, slang, vulgarity, flowery language or cliche sayings. 

 

Understanding Literal Thinkers

What Are The Odds?

     The chances of winning the lottery are exceedingly remote, but that doesn't stop people from playing. On average, US adults spend about $313 per year on lottery tickets. 

     For some people, often those with the least amount of money to spare, playing the lottery can be a serious drain on their finances. It's true. According to statistics an overwhelming amount of lottery participants are in the lower economic classes. That's why economics experts claim that the lottery is a tax on the poor. 

     Lotteries don't involve skill; they are determined purely by chance. So what are your odds of winning? The short answer is, "Not so good." For example, in a lottery in which you pick 6 numbers out of 49 numbers, your chances of winning the jackpot are 1 in 13,983,816, that's almost one in 14 million. If you bought one lottery ticket every week you could expect to win once every 269,000 years.

     Of course not all lotteries have odds that good. The Mega Millions multi-state lottery has odds of approximately 1 in almost 176 million! 

    There are some things that offer better odds than winning the lottery. According to figures from the National Weather Service, you're over 20,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to win the Mega Millions. And, you have a one in 59,507 chance of dying from a hornet, wasp, or bee sting. 

     The odds of winning the lottery do not increase by playing frequently; it's better to buy more tickets for the same drawing, but not by much.

 

 A Look at Casino Profitability 

The Best And The Worst Casino Game Odds

Sour Grapes and Who Cares?

Samuel L. Jackson Lashes Out At The Oscars, Claims Black Actors Only Win Academy Awards When “Doing Despicable S—t On Screen”  Read his bellyaching HERE

 

Somebody should tell Mr. Jackson nobody cares about who gets Oscars except the Hollywood crowd.

On Eternal Patrol

 

Peter Sinks, Utah

     On February 1, 1985, the temperature at Peter Sinks in Utah plummeted to 69.3  degrees below zero...the second coldest ever recorded in the lower 48 states. The lowest was 69.7 below at Roger's Pass, Montana in January of 1954. 

     Peter Sinks and nearby Middle Sink have the distinction of having all but one of the monthly low temperature records for Utah. Peter Sinks is located in the NE corner of the state and it is so cold due to a combination of the area’s unique basin topography, high elevation and dry climate. 

     Peter Sinks, at an elevation of 8,164 feet, is a natural limestone sinkhole approximately one-half mile in diameter, so it can be likened to a bowl, which has no valley outlet to drain water or air out of it. On calm cloudless nights this high basin loses accumulated day time heat to the atmosphere and the cool dense air slides down the slopes into the basin floor in a process known as cold air pooling.

 

     Extremely low temperatures can occur, especially in the wake of wintertime arctic fronts. Cold as 69 below is, it's not an unusual reading during December, January, and even February at Oymyakon in Siberia which is at the heart of the Siberian "pole of cold," site of the coldest permanent settlements on Earth. The lowest temperature on record there was reached on February 6, 1933, with a reading of 90 below. 

     What happens to a person at these extreme temperatures? Hypothermia starts setting in when a person's body temperature drops from the normal 98.6 degrees to about 95 degrees. 

     The body begins to shut down. Heart and breathing rates slow down, accompanied by confusion and sleepiness. Without rapid rewarming, your heart rate and breathing slows even further, leading to poor circulation to the brain, heart and extremities, which is fatal. 

     Hypothermia can develop in as little as five minutes in temperatures of minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit if you're not dressed properly and have exposed skin, especially the scalp, hands, fingers,and face. At 30 below zero, hypothermia can set in in about 10 minutes. 

     Hypothermia is a medical emergency when your body loses heat faster than it can produce it. As your body temperature drops, your heart, brain, and internal organs cannot function. Without aggressive resuscitation and rapid rewarming, you will ultimately not survive. 

     Oddly, stripping off clothing is a common occurrence in later stages of hypothermia. That's due to nerve damage and mental confusion... a person may feel like they're burning up rather than freezing and begin taking off their clothes and shoes. The phenomenon has a name: paradoxical undressing.

Odd Animal Behavior