In The Realm

Of Reality

The Pledge Of Allegiance



The pledge was written by magazine editor Francis Bellamy in 1892 for a nationwide public school celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s landing. In 1898, during the Spanish American War, New York became the first state to mandate that public school students recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each school day. Many states followed suit, and the pledge remained a staple of the daily routine in many schools until 1988, when it became an issue in the presidential campaign. (From - 5 Myths About The American Flag)



iCloud

I get it! Apple figured out that instead of having to waste space for 20,000,000 copies of the same song that 20,000,000 iTunes users might have in their libraries, they only need 1 highest quality copy per X number of people streaming, or downloading the song at the same time. Apple already has 16,000,000 different song titles in it’s data base, and when you upload your iTunes library of music, they don’t actually upload your song, but authorize your account to use their copy. Brilliant!



The same goes for movies and TV shows. iCloud changes the way we use on line storage. Until iCloud, on line storage has been millions of people using server space to store millions of individual copies of the same song or movie. With so many people using iTunes, the old method of storing data is no longer needed.



Nothing To Sneeze At

Some of my friends have been complaining that they have never suffered from hay fever as much as they have in the last couple of years. (I don’t get hay fever, but I notice the Buick is heavily coated with pollen more days than I can remember.)

What is the cause of this, and other increasing health related problems world wide?

According to Dan Ferber, (He and Paul Epstein, MD, are the authors of  Changing Planet, Changing Health);

• Asthma and allergies: Burning coal, gasoline and oil raises levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causes ragweed, the main cause of hay fever, to produce more—and more potent—pollen. Respiratory allergies can trigger and worsen asthma attacks. And diesel-burning buses and trucks emit black soot, which irritates the lungs and causes breathing problems. Black soot also sticks to ragweed pollen, carrying it deeper into lungs.

You can find out even more about climate change and health from the CDC.

What is This?



Up until now, the way I would have to find out what kind of mushroom that grows to the size of a softball and appeared over night in the grass on the north east side of ‘A’ building, was to search through thousands of Google images, and guide books.

Those day’s are over, almost. Google has introduced a new search program based on images. You take a picture of something, put it in the Google search bar, and ‘presto’, it finds a match and answers the question, “What is this”?

Here is a better explanation;

Today’s Relatively Appropriate Song;





Learning More Everyday