Wednesday, October 2, 2013

News – Mia Farrow, whose first husband was Frank Sinatra, had a son named Satchel Ronan Farrow while linked with Woody Allen in 1987. He was considered to be Allen's son, but Farrow now says that he may have been Frank Sinatra's, as she and Sinatra “never really broke up.” He broke off all relations with Woody Allen when Allen began having an affair with Farrow's adopted daughter Soon Yi Previn. He was a child prodigy, going to Bard College at the age of 11 and graduating at 15. He then went to Yale Law School and graduated at the age of 21. He has worked as a special adviser to the State Department under Hillary Clinton dealing with youth issues in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His biography on Wikipedia is lengthy, giving a great deal of information about his work.

On Dr. Oz, channel 4 – The guest is a man (I missed his name) who is well-known on the internet for his simple and ingenious ideas for doing various things. Today he came on the show with cream in a soda bottle which he had a number of members of the audience shake strongly, and after about a minute or two of constant shaking he had a small amount of butter. The audience and Dr. Oz were thrilled. I can remember my grandmother, who had a cow, making butter by shaking it in a quart jar. I remember finding it exciting, too. It's especially good to watch in a glass jar because you can see the little balls of butter forming and then becoming one large mass. She also had a real churn with an agitator on a long stick. The stick protrudes up through the neck and top of the churn and you simply push it up and down forcefully for maybe fifteen minutes until all the oil is clinging to itself in concentrated globules, and separating from the “buttermilk,” which you can drink. The butter is soft and sweet, and ready to use in cooking or on a hot biscuit!

News --- Last night we had an event at JIA, Jacksonville's airport. Zeljko Causevic, originally from Bosnia, approached an NSA official and told him he had a bomb in his backpack. The authorities did find “a luggage scale with a microchip inside” and a remote control, which he said was a detonator. It sounds like he may be delusional, to me. He was arrested for making a false bomb threat, and is going to go before a judge in Jacksonville today at 1:00. Another man was also arrested for “behaving suspiciously,” but was not connected to the Bosnian. The airport was evacuated and closed from 5:00 PM to 11:00 PM. There was also a report of two “suspicious packages,” one found in the terminal and another in the parking garage. One of the packages had a device in it that “certainly had some destructive nature to it,” and had to be taken off site to be neutralized. According to the news articles on the Internet, these packages were not considered to be connected to the Bosnian.

News on the Net – A 3,800 year old bow with arrows dated from 5,400 years ago has been uncovered by snow melt in Norway. These dates were derived by carbon isotope dating, which has a wide margin of error in time on each specimen dated. That's the only reason I can think of for the bow and the arrows to be so far apart in time. The period given is Neolithic, with the probable prey being reindeer. The design of the bow and arrows is like that found in the Yukon and “in other frigid landscapes.” The researcher Martin Callahan does not believe that the similarity implies cultural contact, but “the same type of adaptation.” I suppose there are a limited number of ways to make bows and arrows. It does seem to me, though, to be an indicator of just how old cultural traditions may be, going back to a time when cultural mixing may have occurred. Reindeer herding is still found in a number of isolated far north localities today and by different cultural groups. According to the Wikipedia article entitled Prehistoric Europe, “from about 43,000 to 6,000 years ago, Europe had Homo sapiens hunter-gatherer populations.” It seems to me there was probably cultural exchange and trading between groups in the north European and Asian areas during this time period. According to Wikipedia, the Bering land bridge was available for migration between 22,000 and 7,000 years ago. There was glacial melt afterward and water covered it by about 6,000 BP. A genetic study published in 2007 indicated that the migrations across the Bering land bridge occurred around 12,000 BP from a single location in Eastern Siberia, as evidenced by “a unique genetic variant widespread in natives across both continents.” It's all very interesting to speculate about, though it's hard to prove conclusively any tie between the two widely separated regions today. Archaeologists can't really prove very many things beyond the shadow of a doubt, due to the fact that so few physical objects last over the thousands of years involved. They do make a lot of very educated guesses, though. I can't resist reading about prehistoric societies, and a simple bow with arrows from that time period are a real treasure.

Enough of this. It's lunch time already.

1:19 Reading my mystery. It's a good one, about a college student named Mark Darrow and a female black friend of his who was murdered after a drinking party at the fraternity house. By the next day, the police had arrested Darrow's closest friend Steve Tillman for the murder. As time passes, the trial takes place and Tillman was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. For a number of years Darrow goes to see him in prison, then finally stops visiting him and pursues his life as a prominent lawyer. After 16 years, the college president embezzles nearly a million dollars from the college funds and is removed as president, and Mark Darrow is called in to replace him. The new phase of Darrow's life is unfolding. I'll read more later.

2:35 I have just called HP tech support about my printer. I replaced the old inks with new ones and the printer still reads that they are expired. The tech said that because I waited until it was expired, I have damaged the hardware of the printer and will have to buy a new one. I expect it will be about $200.00. I have made a deal with Eileen Whitlock to go with me this Saturday afternoon to help me carry the printer and then plug it into the computer and install it. I promised to pay her $20.00. I'll try to get the same kind so its inks will be the same kind and colors. Maybe I can use these new ones I just bought in the new machine.