Entries from June 2008
Today is the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Information from calendar-updates.com -
In the United States and the rest of the northern hemisphere, the first day of the summer season is the day of the year when the Sun is farthest north (on June 20th or 21st). This day is known as the Summer Solstice.
The declination of the Sun on the Summer Solstice is known as the tropic of cancer (23° 27′). In the southern hemisphere, winter and summer solstices are exchanged so that the Summer Solstice is the day on which the Sun is farthest south.
A common misconception is that the earth is further from the sun in winter than in summer. Actually, the Earth is closest to the sun in December which is winter in the Northern hemisphere.
Here is Google US’s logo for the date-
Categories: General Blogging · Google
June 18th, 2008 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of Japanese immigration in Brazil.
According to the Portuguese language Wikipedia-
The Kasato Maru is considered the first ship to arrive in Brazil with Japanese immigrants, on June 18, 1908. It arrived in the Port of Santos bringing 165 families that came to work on the coffee plantations in the state of Sao Paulo.
The following picture is of the Liberdade neighborhood in downtown Sao Paulo. It is the Japan-town of Sao Paulo.
The following is the image on Google Brasil’s site:
Categories: Anniversaries · Google
An engineer named Rafeal de Andrade has not been able to renew his vehicle registration this year because his car owes R$ 127.69 ($78.19) to the Department of Transportation of Rio de Janeiro for a fine that he refuses to pay.
The department that is accusing the engineer for driving 880 kph (about 550 mph) according to an automatic radar in Niteroi (near Rio de Janeiro) in a 60 kph zone (37 mph). The following information has been translated from the Brazilian site called G1.
Rafael appealed the decision with the Department. He imagined that the fine would be forgiven, but it was not. For the Department of Transportation in Brasilia, vehicle registration can only be released once fines are paid. “I refuse to pay the fine”, he said. “I don’t have registration, and if I am stopped, I want to know what I am going to say to the officer,” he complained.
The race car driver Rodolfo Santos considers this allegation absurd. “There is not one car in Formula One that could reach 880 kph. I drive the fastest car in South American and we can only get up to 270kph (168 mph) and that is fast enough.”
Rafael’s car is a 1.0 liter VW Gol.
According to the National Deparment of Transportation, Rafael will have to pay the fine to appeal to the State Transit Council. But the engineer has already decided to file a lawsuit that will ask for a reprise, under the basis of “legal and factual impossibility of a 1.0 liter VW Gol ever reaching 880 kph on a Brazilian highway.”
Translated from Portuguese- Multa por trafegar a 880 km/h
Categories: Latin American idiocy · Oddities · terrible things
I came across a cool scheduling/calendar site that is functional across many platforms. I can now have reminders sent to my gtalk, gmail, mobile phone and much more. It is also convenient because I can update it from my mobile. What’s more, it is functional with many different things, such as Google Calendars, Outlook Calendars. The pro version has even more functionality, such as syncing with Blackberries.
Visit them at http://www.rememberthemilk.com and check it out for yourself!
Here are two screenshots- one of the gtalk window, and one of the plugin into Gmail (using Firefox)
Categories: Internet
This phenomenon called Manhattanhenge happens three times a year- the sun sets perfectly aligned with the building.
More information on Wikipedia. More images on Flickr.
Post translated from the Portuguese language Novo Mundo Blog
Categories: Curiosities
There is a national petition asking our politicians to open up drilling and exploration in our national territory to lower the cost of oil. Of course, I am for finding alternative energy, but we need oil right now to bridge that gap!
Categories: Politics
National Day of Sweden, or Swedish Flag Day (Sveriges nationaldag or svenska flaggans dag) is observed in Sweden on June 6 every year. The day was made into a national day by the Riksdag (Swedish parliament) in 1983, before which it was just honored as “the Swedish flag day“.
From Wikipedia
Click picture to amplify the picture of a Swedish flag being flown on a home.
Here is Google Sweden’s logo for the day-
Categories: Google · Holidays
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660), commonly referred to as Diego Velázquez, was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary baroque period, important as a portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family, other notable European figures, and commoners, culminating in the production of his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).
From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Velázquez’s artwork was a model for the realist and impressionist painters, in particular Édouard Manet. Since that time, more modern artists, including Spain’s Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, as well as the Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon, have paid tribute to Velázquez by recreating several of his most famous works.
Source: Wikipedia
Google is commemorating the event with this logo:
Categories: Anniversaries · Google
This is a new section of the blog- posting brain-busting questions from the National Geographic Society! Please answer with a comment to the post, no cheating!
- Sparks, a rapidly growing city on the Truckee River, is located near Lake Tahoe in which state?
- The town of Luray, famous for its nearby caverns, is located in the Shenandoah Valley in which state?
- For just over half a century, St. Mary’s City was the colonial capital of which state?
- Green Bay is at the southwestern edge of the Door Peninsula, not far from Lake Michigan in which state?
- The Rogue River runs through Grants Pass as it flows from the Cascades to the Pacific in which state?
Categories: National Geographic
