Breakfast for a Boy

It's been common scientific understanding that the sex of a baby is genetically determined by the father. Now we learn that the mother's diet may actually have an effect on whether she gives birth to a boy or girl. Researchers at Exeter and Oxford Universities recently reported a higher percentage of boys born to women who ate a high-energy diet around the time of conception; more girls were born to women who routinely skipped breakfast and had lower-calorie diets. People who skip breakfast have lower glucose levels. High levels of glucose encourage the growth and development of male embryos and inhibit female embryo growth.

Boston Public Library

On this date in 1848, the Massachusetts government okayed the establishment of the Boston Public Library, which would become the role model for all of America's lending libraries. Though libraries had already existed in various parts of the world for hundreds of years, this was the first municipal library in the United States to be supported by tax dollars, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and other materials and take them home to read and use. The third-largest library in the US, the current building was opened in 1895, on Copley Square.

 Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest. — Lady Bird Johnson

Renewable Energy

In addition to providing incentives to promote renewable energy sources, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended daylight savings time in the US by approximately four weeks... except in a leap year. In a compromise reached with religious lobbies and NASA, clocks are turned back again for the first two weeks of April in every year which has 29 days in February. This adjustment is necessary to compensate for discrepancies between the Gregorian calendar and the astronomical year. Hope you remembered to change your clock today. Oh, yeah... and the moon is made of green cheese.

Quote

"This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three-hundred and sixty-four." — Mark Twain

Govt allots Rs 15 crores for DD Urdu

Govt allots Rs 15 crores for DD Urdu

Wednesday - Mar 19, 2008

Televisionpoint.com Correspondent | Mumbai
An amount of Rs 15 crores has been allotted for Urdu channel of Doordarshan for the year 2007-08. The DD Urdu channel has been included for mandatory carriage by all cable operators and multi-system operators (MSOs) in all states and Union Territories, apart from being a part of DD Direct Plus which is Doordarshan�s free-to-air direct-to-home (DTH) platform.
I&B minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi has informed the Parliament today, adding that Twenty-one persons knowing Urdu have been given contract jobs in this channel.
Effective packaging, outsourcing quality software from top producers from the field of production, filmmaking, culture, literature and media are some of the steps taken to popularise the channel. The channel has allotted a daily slot to the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) for the telecast of informative and educational programmes produced by its Media Research Institute.
Launched on the Independence Day in 2006, DD Urdu is now a 24x7 channel. It is being telecast on the Insat-4A satellite, thus making it available throughout the world. The channel has a fresh band from 5-11 pm, repeating these programmes in the bands from 7 am to 12:30 pm and then from 1 pm to 3:30 pm everyday.

Holly Hunter

Happy 50th birthday to actress Holly Hunter. A lot of talent and her share of serendipitous coincidences joined forces to make Hunter a movie star. In 1980, she had just finished appearing in an off-Broadway show when she got stuck in an elevator with playwright Beth Henley. That meeting led to Hunter's Broadway debut in Henley's Crimes of the Heart. Directors Joel and Ethan Coen saw her in Crimes of the Heart and wanted to cast her in their first film, Blood Simple, but Hunter was unavailable. She introduced them to her roommate, Frances McDormand, who ended up getting the role and marrying Joel Coen. Later, Hunter made her feature film debut in the Coen Brothers comedy Raising Arizona.

Dord a ghost word

Sixty-nine years ago today, a ghost word was outed from its hiding place on page 771 of Webster's New International Dictionary, where it had spent five comfortable years. Dord started life on a slip of paper prepared by the lexicon's chemistry editor, who noted that "D or d" was an abbreviation for density. A serendipitous misinterpretation saw the entry being read as a single word, dord, and it was accordingly registered and printed up as a noun with the meaning "density." No proofreader caught the error, but five years later an editor noticed the word had no etymology and began the investigation that led to the word's being banished.
Quote: "...for why shouldn't dord mean density?" — Philip Babcock Gove

Air Force Security in Washington

One night at McChord Air Force Base in Washington, I was dispatched to check out the security fence where an alarm had gone off. The fence was at the end of the base runway. When I got to the scene, I found that a raccoon was the culprit, so I ran around and flapped my arms to scare off the animal. Suddenly an air-traffic controller came over the public-address system and announced loudly, "Attention to the airman at the end of the runway. You are cleared for takeoff."
-- Chad Blake

Historical Facts on 05 February

• United Artists: US film company was founded by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith (1919)
• Reader's Digest: DeWitt and Lila Wallace published their first issue of condensed articles; the pocket-sized volume cost 25 cents (1922)
• Tybee bomb: the US lost a hydrogen bomb off the coast of Georgia; some 14 nuclear weapons are known to be missing from the US arsenal alone (1958)
• Alan Shepard: astronaut became the first person to golf on the moon (1971)