Hi,

Tomorrow is the anniversary of when the Dali Lama fled Tibet (1959), the opening of the Eiffel Tower (1889), Soviet Georgia votes for independence (1991) and we bought the US Virgin Islands for $25M (1917).  It is the birth anniversary of the guy that invented Bunsen Burners, Robert Wilhelm Eberhard von Bunsen (1811), Rene Descartes (1596), labor rights leader Cesar Chavez (1927) and composer Franz Joseph Hayden (1732).

I don’t know if you remember funeral picture of the Navy Seal Jon Tumilson where is dog was lying under his casket.  Jon perished when the Chinook helicopter crashed in Afghanistan in 2011 killing 28 Seals.  The picture was very moving.  NCIS had an episode based on this story.  Jon’s family is planning on unveiling a statue of Jon and Hawkeye this summer and invited the NCIS crew to the unveiling in Jon’s hometown.

OK guys, be careful.  Downloading “free” from the Internet generally is not “free”.  Which kind of follows life, “Nothing in life is free” to coin a phrase.  🙂  Going on line to one of those file sharing sites is not the same as downloading songs from iTunes, movies from Netflix, etc.  When you go to sites like LimeWire, BitTorrent and others, you’re basically walking into the wild west.  The most important thing to remember is to NEVER agree to the software “automatically configuring the settings on your computer”.  That opens all kinds of doors for malware, viruses, worms and other nefarious programs.

In France, a family of Moroccan decent named their newborn on September 11, 2010 Jihad.  Mistake (?) #1.  Recently, his uncle bought him a shirt that read on the front “I am a bomb” and on the back it read “Jihad Born Sept. 11”  Mistake (?) #2.  Jihad’s mom dressed him in the shirt and dropped him off at day care.  Mistake (?) #3.  I’m sorry, I really don’t think there are people out there that are that stupid to name a child that, let alone put that shirt on him and INNOCENTLY send him do day care in it.

I tried to let this one go, but I can’t let it slide.  I thought it was too funny.  When the Republicans met last week at the CPAC convention in Virginia, they were trying to put on a new face that would reach out across the board to all the people they have alienated.  I’m not sure if they think we don’t remember that they were adamantly against immigration reform, one of their planks in the 2012 election was grossly anti gay, they are against woman’s rights in abortion, they want to balance the budget by keeping tax breaks for the 2% and cutting services for the 98%.  Honest, I’m going somewhere here, be patient.  At the convention, because they invited younger delegates (I don’t know, I’m assuming these younger delegates where white and male) the Republicans, for the first time, had basketball courts and game rooms set up.  OMG how out of touch can you be.  I guess they also had makeup kits for the gays, McDonald’s coupons for the poorer, watermelon for the blacks and copies of Representative Akin’s soon to be best seller Legitimate Rape. 🙂

Richard & Andrew Mellon established the Mellon Institute in 1913 in what eventually became part of Carnegie Mellon University.  They hired Robert Kennedy Duncan, who’s book The Chemistry of Commerce inspired them to lead the Institute.  Research was not a big thing back there, new ideas were created by innovators like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell.  Companies didn’t have R & D departments.  The Mellons set up a business incubator sort of set up for R & D.  Talented researchers were sent to the labs on fellowships to work on specific projects.  The labs were segregated so the researchers could keep their ideas private.  Latter on, inspired by this concept of research, Bell Labs, DuPont Research and others spun off.  The original lab is still a two story wooden building on Bayard Street in Pitt’s campus.  Later, it was housed in Allen Hall, also in Pitt’s campus.  In recognition of the far reaching impact of the Institute, The American Chemical Society honored the work with a ceremony and plaque March 28.

Comcast has banned all gun advertising.  And as expected, the sporting goods shops have raised the cry of alarm.  Why can’t we learn to play nice?  Why does everything have to be either or, why can’t we meet in the middle.  I don’t see a use for extended ammunition clips nor do I think you need an assault rifle to hunt deer.  I really would like to see them off the market.  They found 154 spent casing Adam Lanza fired on the floor of Newtown Elementary School.  He fired these in less than five minutes.  He had multiple 30 round clips.  If he only had ten round clips, how many lives could have been saved?  Just one is worth it.  But with as much as this make sense to me, if the majority of Americans still want Uzi’s at Walmart’s check-out line, I think it’s stupid, but will go along with you.  Why does everything have to be soooooo dramatic?

I didn’t even place in the Trib’s 2013 Peep Show.  If you have a Facebook page, you can log in to the Trib’s Facebook page and like me (it’s Peepador #68 out of 112 contestants-that’s not a ranking it’s just where I am) or make comments.  You can also just view all 112 entries at the Trib’s site.  This is also on Facebook, but you can only view from this page.

Have a Happy Easter and don’t eat too much chocolate,

ed