SNAP!

To get to the wishbone, one MUST do some serious, serious turkey eating. Then once found, it must dry out for a day or two for the ritual to work properly. So, good luck with your wishbone. And don’t forget the fabulous leftovers! If you’re reading this on the afternoon after Thanksgiving, I’m on my second helping. Enjoy yours!!  :-)))

By now, I hope you have recovered from your Thanksgiving coma – (see science on tryptophan), patched up the inappropriate conversation damage done with the relatives, and gotten your fill of football, stuffing and pie (never enough pie! Pumkin and Apple Caramel!).  Now, as you decide just how much and which of the leftovers you plan to consume today (turkey mayo sandwich, stuffing and gravy, potatoes and jellied cranberry sauce, or just the green bean casserole), I wanted to share a little history and fun facts on the wishbone tradition.  Growing up in the Kowalski house, Thanksgiving is quite the undertaking – making all the food, heading down to the metro parks for the pick-up football game and associated trips to the ER, enough pie for 20.  Today, with all the kids and grandkids and great grandkids, we need an offsite location to feed the 88 who will be able to make it back to Cleveland this year!?.  One of my favorite memories is the breaking of the turkey wish bone.  Mom used to pull it out of the “bird” and set it on the kitchen windowsill to let it dry.  On Friday, she had to choose who got to do the wish ceremony (come to think of it, this could be where Dad got his inspiration for PIA (Pain in the @%$) Jobs!).  The wishbone ritual is much older than you probably suspect, even though it came to America with the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. In fact, it began thousands of years earlier in the ancient Etruscan civilization.  Enjoy the info below, and thanks to makeitgrateful.com and backyardpoultry.com. Now go get some more pie!

  • Thanksgiving is one of America’s most beloved holidays and is full of traditions. Some are relatively modern additions — but others, like the breaking of the turkey’s wishbone (technically known as the furcula), have ancient origins.
  • Though wishbones are commonly associated with turkeys, all poultry have them — chickens, ducks, broad-breasted vs. heritage turkeys, and even geese — and people have been using these domesticated birds to grant wishes or tell the future since ancient times.
  • The Etruscans were a civilization in ancient Italy (from at least 800 BC) who practiced bird divination — the practice of using birds as oracles to predict the future. Chickens were allowed to peck at Etruscan letters on the ground to divine the answers to questions about the future. When a chicken was killed, the Etruscans laid the wishbone in the sun so the people could touch it and continue to use the chicken’s oracle power even after its death. People who touched the bone made wishes as they did, which is why we now commonly call it the wishbone.
  • Poultry have a long history of being used to grant wishes and tell the future. Ancient Greeks used to place grain on marked cards or mark kernels of corn with letters and carefully record which ones their chickens pecked first. The Roman army carried cages of “sacred chickens” with them — the designated chicken keeper was known as the pullarius. Once, as Andrew Lawler writes in Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?, the sacred chickens suggested a Roman general stay in camp. He fought instead and “he and most of his army were slain within three hours as a devastating earthquake shook Italy.” Obey the chickens, or else became the cry, as  poultry premonitions became so important that many advisers began to game the system. Chickens were often kept hungry or overfed the day before “divining” desired answers.
  • Over time, instead of wishing on bones on the ground, the Romans grappled over the wishbone to break it, with the victor being the person who broke off the larger part of the bone. The Romans brought their culture and traditions with them to the British Isles, and the wishbone tradition caught on there.
  • The first recorded practice of wishbone divination in Britain dates back to 1455; a goose wishbone (called a merrythought) was used to divine the weather on St. Martin’s Day, a harvest celebration that fell in November. Merrythoughts were sometimes broken between two single people, and the person who got the longer side of the bone was then predicted to marry first. The English colonists then brought the poultry bone tradition along with them to America and included it in the first Thanksgiving celebration.
  • The first known mention of the word “wishbone” as it refers specifically to a turkey bone was in an 1842 article in The Sun newspaper of Baltimore, Maryland.
  • Other religions also have ceremonies that involve poultry, many of them controversial. During Yom Kippur, some Jews practice kapparot where a live chicken is swung overhead in a circle three times, taking on that person’s sins, before the bird is slaughtered and given to the poor.
  • Geese helped foretell how bad the coming winter would be in European and Scandinavian traditions. Tate writes that after St. Martin’s Night, a dried goose’s breastbone would be examined to determine “whether the coming winter would be cold, wet, or dry.”
  • Many children like to study the wishbone long and hard before deciding which side they think will win a coveted wish. Today the internet has taken a bit of magic out of the wishbone tradition with tips on winning like choosing the thicker side (obvious) or ones that use the physics of pulling apart a two-pronged bone to your advantage like holding the wishbone closer to the center or letting the other person do most of the pulling.
  • When you face off with someone to break a wishbone, you carry on a tradition that harkens back thousands of years and spans continents. Here’s wishing that you break off the bigger piece this post-Thanksgiving Day!

 

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.

As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))
Have fun!!

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Now That’s Hedy

My friends, the incredible beauty of Hedy Lamarr is her brains. In that second photo from the top is Hedy Lamarr on the left, Louis B. Mayer (Metro Goldwin Mayer) who introduced her to America and Rita Hayworth. Below that on the right she’s with Spencer Tracy. Second image from the bottom is her & arranger George Antheil’s patent drawing for frequency hopping. And, not to worry, there are no shortages of t-shirt options for Hedy Lamarr fans. Also check out the terrific video links at the end and a really great podcast made just for kids. 

I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day, and we started to discuss the genius behind great inventions.  Reflection, pondering, trial and error and sometimes just straight-out incredible ideas – it’s usually pretty tough to know where they come from.  Now, combine the mind of a great natural genius inventor with the beauty of a global superstar actress – and you get Hedy Lamarr – considered by some as the greatest looking actress of all times – and one of the greatest natural inventors.  Hats off to all the engineers out there – handsome, beautiful, or just another face in the crowd, I marvel at your ideas and passion.  Here’s a fun little recap of an amazing woman and an incredible life – filled with travel, inventions, movies, drama, marriages and more.  Enjoy!  And be sure to catch one of her great movies. Thanks Wikipedia, PBS and womenshistory.org.

  • Hedy Lamarr (/ˈheɪdi/; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian-born American film actress and inventor.
  • Her father was born to a Galician Jewish family in Lemberg (now Lviv in Ukraine) and was a successful bank director.  Trude, her mother, a pianist and Budapest native, had come from an upper-class Hungarian Jewish family. She had converted to Catholicism and was described as a “practicing Christian” who raised her daughter as a Christian.
  • As a child, Lamarr showed an interest in acting and was fascinated by theatre and film. At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna.  While taking acting classes in Vienna when one day, she forged a note from her mother and went to Sascha-Film and was able to get herself hired as a script girl. While there, she was able to get a role as an extra in Money on the Street (1930), and then a small speaking part in Storm in a Water Glass (1931). Producer Max Reinhardt then cast her in a play entitled The Weaker Sex, which was performed at the Theater in der Josefstadt. Reinhardt was so impressed with her that he brought her with him back to Berlin.
  • In early 1933, at age 18, Lamarr was given the lead in Gustav Machatý’s film Ecstasy. She played the neglected young wife of an indifferent older man.  The film became both celebrated and notorious for showing Lamarr’s face in the throes of pleasure as well as close-up and brief nude scenes, a result of her being “duped” by the director and producer, who used high-power telephoto lenses. As you can imagine, it caused quite a sensation.
  • Although she was dismayed and now disillusioned about taking other roles, the film gained world recognition after winning an award in Rome. Throughout Europe, it was regarded an artistic work. In America it was considered overly sexual and received negative publicity, especially among women’s groups and was banned there and in Germany.
  • Fredrich Mandl, an Austrian military arms merchant and munitions manufacturer, was reputedly the third-richest man in Austria. He was obsessed to meet her. She fell for his charming and fascinating personality, partly due to his immense financial wealth. Her parents, both of Jewish descent, did not approve, due to Mandl’s ties to Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, and later, German Führer Adolf Hitler, but they could not stop the headstrong Lamarr.  On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married Mandl. She was 18 years old and he was 33.
  • Mandl had close social and business ties to the Italian government, selling munitions to the country, and although like Hedy, his own father was Jewish, had ties to the Nazi regime of Germany, as well. Lamarr wrote that the dictators of both countries attended lavish parties at the Mandl home. Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science.
  • Lamarr’s marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable, and she decided to separate herself from both her husband and country. In her autobiography, she wrote that she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris, but by other accounts, she persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party, then disappeared afterward.
  • After arriving in London in 1937, she met Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, who was scouting for talent in Europe.  She initially turned down the offer he made her (of $125 a week), but then booked herself onto the same New York bound liner as him and managed to impress him enough to secure a $500 a week contract. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr, choosing the surname in homage to the beautiful silent film star, Barbara La Marr, on the suggestion of his wife, who admired La Marr. He brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the “world’s most beautiful woman”.
  • Mayer loaned Lamarr to producer Walter Wanger, who was making Algiers (1938), an American version of the French film, Pépé le Moko (1937). Lamarr was cast in the lead opposite Charles Boyer. The film created a “national sensation.”  According to one viewer, when her face first appeared on the screen, “everyone gasped … Lamarr’s beauty literally took one’s breath away.”
  • Her off-screen life and personality during those years was quite different from her screen image. She spent much of her time feeling lonely and homesick. She might swim at her agent’s pool but shunned the beaches and staring crowds. When asked for an autograph, she wondered why anyone would want it.
  • She participated in a war bond-selling campaign with a sailor named Eddie Rhodes. Rhodes was in the crowd at each Lamarr appearance, and she would call him up on stage. She would briefly flirt with him before asking the audience if she should give him a kiss. The crowd would say “yes”, to which Hedy would reply that she would if enough people bought war bonds. After enough bonds were purchased, she would kiss Rhodes and he would head back into the audience. Then they would head off to the next war bond rally.
  • Although Lamarr had no formal training and was primarily self-taught, she worked in her spare time on various hobbies and inventions, which included an improved traffic stoplight and a tablet that would dissolve in water to create a carbonated drink (think Coca Cola) for the soldiers.
  • Among the few who knew of Lamarr’s inventiveness was aviation tycoon Howard Hughes. She suggested he change the rather square design of his aeroplanes (which she thought looked too slow and boxy) to a more streamlined shape, based on pictures of the fastest birds and fish she could find. He actively supported her “tinkering” hobbies and put his team of scientists and engineers at her disposal, saying they would do or make anything she asked for.
  • During World War II, Lamarr learned that radio-controlled torpedoes, an emerging technology in naval war, could easily be jammed and set off course by the Nazis. She thought of creating a frequency-hopping signal that could not be tracked or jammed. She contacted her friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, to help her develop a device for doing that, and he succeeded by synchronizing a miniaturized player-piano roll mechanism with radio signals.  They drafted designs for the frequency-hopping system, which they patented.  Antheil recalled: “Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until later, the principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi.”
  • “We began talking about the war, which, in the late summer of 1940, was looking most extremely black. Hedy said that she did not feel very comfortable, sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state. She said that she knew a good deal about munitions and various secret weapons … and that she was thinking seriously of quitting MGM and going to Washington, DC, to offer her services to the newly established Inventors’ Council.”
  • In 1997, Lamarr and Antheil received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Bronze Award, given to individuals whose creative lifetime achievements in the arts, sciences, business, or invention fields have significantly contributed to society. Lamarr was featured on the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel. In 2014, Lamarr and Antheil were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
  • During her film career, she was featured in over 30 films. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Blvd adjacent to Vine Street where the walk is centered.
  • Lamarr was married and divorced six times and had three children.

 

An interview with Denise Loder-DeLuca, Hedy Lamarr’s daughter.

A very old TV game show called “What’s My Line?”  Go to about 14:56 for the “MYSTERY GUEST: Hedy Lamarr”

And one podcast:
Have you heard of this Podcast: “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls”? If you have kids, listen to it with them. This one is on Hedy Lamarr read by Tatiana Maslany.Gives a lot of great info in kid level writing. Runs 19 minutes.

 

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.

As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))
Have fun!!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

SNAP

Throwing the Perfect spiral isn’t easy but it can be learned. The pros do it. Kids and dads do it, too. It just takes practice, practice, practice. Don’t forget to check the videos at the bottom. Especially that last one with Drew Brees. WOW!!!

Hope you are enjoying this seasonal transition to fall and the upcoming … (can’t say it).  I’m guessing like you, I was drawn to the television this past weekend and watched my beloved Brownies lose another heartbreaker to those demons out east.  During the game, I was reminiscing on my much earlier days playing quarterback on the high school and college levels, and still marveled how the pros throw a football.  I went on line, and did some digging – for my engineering buds out there – and found some great info on the physics and details of throwing a perfect spiral.  (One of my favorite tips was “the final finger flip). One of my daughter’s can still throw the “perfect” spiral! On top of this, I considered what it takes to make a “perfect play” – when all 11 execute perfectly – and it reminded me of my great team here at KHT – everyone doing their job, in harmony, with perfect results (talk about a consistent delivery on your PIA (Pain in the @%$)Jobs!  Like the pros, we also consider the obstacles, plan a solution, practice/practice, all execute together, and bingo – touchdown!  Here’s some cool info on that crazy football pass and what it takes to make a perfect throw.  Enjoy, and thanks to cps digital.org, yahoo.com, wikipedia and You Tube for the info.

  • You may think throwing a football is one simple motion, but you would be wrong. When you release a football, if thrown well, it should spin at about 400-600 RPM’s, or revolutions per minute.
  • This spin creates a gyroscopic torque, which is when the axis of a spinning body is tilted. This creates a third axis that is perpendicular to the spin and the tilt axis. Gravity will try to pull the nose of the ball downward but will have a hard time, the ball is aerodynamic so the forces of wind counteract gravity and keep it in the air longer.
  • Newton’s laws help dictate the pattern of all moving objects, including footballs. The path of a football’s flight is not random, it is the result of the physical forces of inertia, air resistance and gravity. Newtons first law of motion states that an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. the basic flight pattern of a football is the shape of a parabola, this shows that there is a bend in the football’s movement through the air. Newton’s first law applies here because there are outside forces like air resistance to keep the ball from traveling in a straight line.
  • Newton’s second law states that the total change of an objects motion or position is equal to the sum of all forces acting on that object. As a football flies through the air the forces acting on it are constantly changing, except gravity. As the quarterback releases the ball inertia is the greatest force acting on it, that is why it travels upward. as the football reaches its high point inertia weakens due to air resistance. Gravity then takes over and pulls the ball back towards the earth.
  • Newton’s third law tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is shown through a football’s lift which helps it fly higher and longer, lift occurs when air is moving around an object. As a football moves sideways through the air, its upward motion forces more air under the ball which creates a buoyant force which is why quarterbacks throw at an upward angle.
  • (Did Newton play in the NFL??)
  • Looking back to some basic physics classes, we can understand that the way a ball flies depends on the launch angle and the speed it is thrown at. However, you can throw a football as hard as you want, that doesn’t guarantee that it will fly in a perfect spiral. In order to get a football to fly perfectly, we have to be a little more concerned with inducing gyroscopic precession.
  • Due to the gyroscopic effects of a spinning football, the way the ball behaves in the air actually varies based on whether the quarterback is right or left-handed. A ball thrown by a right-handed quarterback will curve slightly to the right, and one thrown by a left-handed quarterback would do just the opposite. Understanding this is essential to throwing an accurate pass.
  • Now, adding more spin to the ball isn’t all that throwing a good spiral needs. A faster-spinning ball will take up more proportion of the imparted energy to continue spinning than to continue moving forward. This means that quarterbacks can actually lose yardage when they impart more spin to a ball. It’s all about finding a happy medium. The ball needs the necessary amount of spin to attain proper gyroscopic motion, while also maximizing the forward velocity to maximize range.
  • The launch angle is another fairly simple aspect of a football pass, but one that is essential to mastering the game. Like any other trajectory, the maximum distance can be achieved with a launch angle of 45 degrees. At higher than 45, height will be maximized, and at lower angles, the ball will likely not travel as far as you need it to.
  • Throwing a perfect football may be easy to understand from a mathematics and physics perspective, but mastering the art is a completely different challenge. If you were to give any random physics student a problem involving a quarterback and a running receiver, it would likely be one of the most difficult parabolic motion problems they ever completed. Yet, good quarterbacks can perfectly take into account launch angle, velocity, and spin to perfectly place a football in the hands of a receiver down the field.
  • Baker Mayfield threw an absolute rocket of a Hail Mary on Monday night against the Baltimore Ravens.  Mayfield threw the ball from the Browns’ own 40-yard line and wound up overthrowing the end zone.  While it was ultimately incomplete, the pass landed in the history books as the longest ever recorded by Pro Football Focus.
  • The longest pass completion of 99 yards has been achieved on 11 occasions in the National Football League (NFL) and has always resulted in a touchdown. The most recent occurrence was a pass from Eli Manning to Victor Cruz, for the New York Giants against the New York Jets (all USA) on 24 December 2011.
  • In a given year, NFL quarterbacks throw about 20,000 passes, with a completion rate of 64.9%.
  • An average ball being passed travels about 60 mph.

Longest Passes in History
Browns Fans, Plug in your earphones & crank the audio. Watch Baker!!
Best NFL Passes 

The Physics of a Football Pass – UC Irvine 
How to Throw the Perfect Football Spiral – According to Physics 
Very, VERY Entertaining to Watch: Drew Brees Edition | Dude Perfect 

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.

As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I.  Love.  My.  Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!  
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good.  :-))))
Have fun!!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::