Timmersomethings Blog Of Random Stuff

Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers who were opposed to his plans for the New Deal. The former president also used the IRS on political rivals and prominent Republicans, including an IRS audit of illegal campaign contributions made by a government contractor to congressman and future president Lyndon B. Johnson. During his presidency, Richard Nixon encouraged a secret IRS program called the Special Services Staff, which investigated his political opponents as well as harassing them with audits. More than 10,000 individuals and groups were targeted between 1969 and 1973.

Today's Random Fact: The most popular holidays for barbecuing are, in order, July 4th (71 percent), Memorial Day (57 percent), and Labor Day (55 percent). Technically, to barbecue means to slow-cook meat at a low temperature for a long time over wood or charcoal. What most people do in their back yards is more commonly referred to as grilling. Charcoal briquettes aren't actual charcoal, but a combination of charcoal and other ingredients molded into easy-to-light lumps. Kingsford Charcoal, for example, by far the most popular brand in the US, is made up of bits of charcoal, coal, starch (as a binder), sawdust, and sodium nitrate (to make it burn better). Bonus Fact: There is no definitive history about how the word "barbecue" originated - or why it's sometimes used as a noun, verb, or adjective. Some say the Spaniards get the credit for the word, derived from their "barbacoa" which is an American-Indian word for the framework of green wood on which ...

Today's Random Fact: Several studies show that a plant-based diet increases the body's metabolism, causing the body to burn calories up to 16 percent faster than the body would on a meat-based diet for at least the first 3 hours after meals. Some research suggests that if a man avoids red meats, it improves the sex appeal of his body odor. The American Dietetic Association (ADA) concludes that a vegetarian or vegan diet is healthier than one that includes meat. They note that vegetarians have lower body mass indices, lower rates of death from heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and less prostate and colon cancer. Bonus Fact: There are several types of vegetarians. The strictest type is vegans. Vegans avoid not only meat but also all animal products. There is a debate within the vegan community about whether honey is appropriate for a vegan diet. For example, the Vegan Society and the American Ve...

Today's Random Fact: There are approximately 60 nutrients which are placed in six major categories: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water. Vitamin D is unusual because it is the only vitamin that can be synthesized in the body. Sunlight is the main source of Vitamin D, though sunscreen lotions with high SPF can prevent vitamin D formation. Vitamin D is also the only vitamin that is a hormone. Bonus Fact: Insects such as termites and ants provide 10 percent of the protein consumed worldwide. Where insects are an integral part of a diet, they contribute as much as 40 percent of protein. In the United States, it is estimated that every adult unconsciously consumes one pound of insects each year due to garden produce, poor restaurant and home hygiene, and commercial foods for which the USDA allows a certain amount of insect fragments. Peanut butter, for example, is allowed to have 30 insect fragments per 100 grams. Eggs contain the highest quality food pro...

Yoga can improve orgasms. When a person has an orgasm, the pelvic floor muscles that run between the legs rapidly contract. In yoga, the pelvic floor muscles are known as moola bandha. Yoga strengthens them, providing benefits similar to Kegel exercises. Research has found that women prefer masculine-looking men when they are ovulating, but at other times of the month they seek men with softer features, associated with more social and caring behavior. 1. Largest flower The Corpse flower, also known as Rafflesia arnoldii. The poetically named posy boasts the largest bloom in the world, measuring in at 3-feet wide with blossoms that weigh 15 pounds. 2. The largest animal The blue whale. When a baby blue whale is born, it measures up to 25 feet and weighs up to three tons. Growing to lengths of up to 100 feet and weighing up to 200 tons, the blue whale is, in fact, the biggest animal known to live on Earth. 3. The heaviest known organism In Utah's Fishlake National Forest in Ut...

Today is tomorrow's yesterday, yesterday's tomorrow, and another excuse to drink a beer.

In Sweden, where they use an innovative waste-to-energy program and highly efficient recycling habits, they have actually run out of trash. In order to continue fueling the waste-to-energy factories that provide electricity to a quarter of a million homes and 20 percent of the entire country's district heating, Sweden is now importing trash from the landfills of other European countries. In fact, those countries are paying Sweden to do so, turning garbage into gold for Sweden. Persians first began using colored eggs to celebrate spring in 3,000 B.C. 13th century Macedonians were the first Christians on record to use colored eggs in Easter celebrations. Crusaders returning from the Middle East spread the custom of coloring eggs, and Europeans began to use them to celebrate Easter and other warm weather holidays. The origin of the Easter Bunny can be traced back to 13th-century, pre-Christian Germany. The Teutonic deity Eostra was the goddess of spring and fertility, and feasts were...

December 12, 2012, is the century's last sequential date (unless we go to a 13 month calendar really soon). But is there more to this unique arrangement of numbers than just oddity? A much-cited survey conducted by US-based David's Bridal estimated that around 7,500 brides would be getting married in America today — a 1,446 percent increase from 12/12/11. The New York Times wrote that many couples considered it lucky to get married on repetitive dates, with 07-07-07, 10-10-10 and 11-11-11 each breaking Las Vegas records. According to Chinese numerology, the number one is a yang number which is ruled by the sun and represents independence and individualism. Two is a yin number which is ruled by the moon and represents symmetry and balance. When placed together, the number 12 brings harmony to the yin and yang, balancing the feminine energy of the moon with the masculine energy of the sun. December is the 12th and last month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars, but...

While gold is currently around $1,700 an ounce, it reached an all-time high in 2011 of nearly $1,800 an ounce. Of course, gold has always been valuable not only as a material resource but also as a commodity. Gold is the sixteenth most rare of the chemical elements. Though it is one of the rarest metals, gold was the first to be discovered by man. It took half a year for word to reach the Atlantic coast that gold has been discovered in California. The discovery was made in 1848, but John Augustus Sutter and James Marshall tried to keep it a secret. It wasn't until President Polk, in December 1848, announced the discovery that the gold rush of 1949 began. We have lots of laws, not all of them good. But whether they intend to or not, many laws have very beneficial side effects. Town laws in the U.S. Midwest in the 1880s were passed prohibiting the sale of ice cream sodas on Sunday. In Illinois, ingenious soda fountain owners got around the law by omitting the carbonated water and se...

Since 1978, the cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent. In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day. According to very extensive research detailed in a book entitled "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses", 45 percent of U.S. college students exhibit "no significant gains in learning" after two years in college. Elektro, the world's first humanoid robot, debuted in 1939. Built by Westinghouse, the seven-foot-tall walking machine "spoke" more than 700 words. Elektro later appeared in the 1960 B movie Sex Kittens Go to College. Leonardo da Vinci drew up plans for an armored humanoid machine in 1495. Engineer Mark Rosheim has created a functional miniature version for NASA to help colonize Mars. Americans consume an average of 200 pounds of meat, 31 pounds of cheese, 16 pounds of fish, and 415 pounds of veggies on an annual ba...

The Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, is both the spiritual leader and head of the state of Tibet. Born on July 6, 1935, he was just 2 years old when he was recognized as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso. He took the throne at age 4 and became a monk at age 6. The Dalai Lama has a range of pastimes including meditating, gardening, and repairing watches. According to a study by the American Journal of Public Health, adults who watch three hours of TV a day are more likely to be obese than those who keep it under an hour. Soft drinks represent the largest single source of added sugars in the American diet. The average American will drink 54 gallons of soft drink a year. Andy Warhol made over 300 underground films. 'Sleep', the first, simply showed a man asleep for six hours. In 2006, billionaire collector Eli Broad paid $11.8 million for Warhol's small painting of a can of Campbell's soup. Acoustic guitars date back to the 16th century. Over the ...

By 2010, no state had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. 36 states had a prevalence of 25% or more; 12 of these states (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia) had a prevalence of 30% or more. Historically, obesity primarily afflicted adults, but this has changed in the last 2 decades. 15-25% of American children and adolescents are now obese. Children and adolescents who are obese are likely to be obese in adulthood and to develop obesity-related health problems. The earliest written record of magnification dates back to the 1st century AD, when Seneca the Younger, a tutor of Emperor Nero of Rome, wrote: "Letters, however small and indistinct, are seen enlarged and more clearly through a globe or glass filled with water". Nero (reigned 54-68 AD) is also said to have watched the gladiatorial games using an emerald as a corrective lens. 25% of the global population needs eyeglas...

Bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant on earth, growing as fast as 47.6 inches in a 24-hour period. Giant pandas can consume, on average, 40 pounds of fresh bamboo leaves per day. **************** 52% of all Icelanders own a vibrator. In Japan, the age of consent is 13. **************** Twenty-eight million Americans use indoor tanning booths every year. In the last thirty years, the per capita rate in America for melanoma has increased by 100%. **************** The average Pixar film makes twice the money invested into it domestically and five times that amount on a global scale! None of their movies has garnered less than $150 million in the U.S. Walt Disney only attended one year of high school. **************** Heat waves are one of the most lethal types of weather phenomena, claiming an average of 1,000 lives in America's fifteen largest cities each year. The 1988 heat wave and drought across the eastern United States cost the country $61.6 billion in damages and caused an...

In the summer, the amount of water pouring over Niagra Falls each second could fill 13,000 bathtubs. A dairy cow produces about 100,000 glasses of milk in it's lifetime. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die. You are more likely to be struck by lightning than to be eaten by a shark. You are more likely to be infected by flesh eating bacteria than you are to be struck by lightning. The major change from the Phoenician alphabet to the Greek one of the eighth century was the addition of five letters to represent the vowel sounds. Today's geometry is based on the ideas of ancient Greeks Pythagoras and Euclid. Domesticated for more than 10,000 years, the dog was one of the first animals domesticated by humans. One in three dog owners say they have talked to their pets on the phone. The term film noir, French for "black film", first applied to Hollywood films by French cri...

1. Washing your hands after you go to the bathroom can reduce the spread of diarrheal diseases by almost half. 2. The germs on your fingers double after using the toilet, but 50 percent of men and 25 percent of women do not wash their hands afterward. 3. When threatened, the hairy frog, or 'horror frog,' intentionally breaks its own bones to produce claws that protrude from its toe pads. 4. If cornered, some horned lizards species can shoot their potently foul blood from their eye sockets up to six feet. 5. Nonsmokers who are exposed to second hand smoke at home or in the work place face a 30 percent increase in their chances of developing heart disease or lung cancer. 6. A 2005 National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health indicates that 46 percent of U.S. residents 12 years of age and older have tried marijuana one or more times. 7. The Earth is not actually round in shape; in fact it is geoid. This simply means that the rounded shape has a slight bulge towards the equator...

Did you know.... ...that the words "race car" spelled backward still spells "race car"?...that "eat" is the only word that, if you take the 1st letter and move it to the last, it spells its past tense, "ate"? And have you noticed that if you rearrange the letters in "illegal immigrants," and add just a few more letters, it spells: "Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, violent, non-English-speaking assholes and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-loving, raggedy-ass bastards with you." How weird is that???