When I was a kid in the 70s, there were only a handful of obese kids in school. Some of these kids had actual medical problems that attributed to their obesity. Some seemed to have a quick weight loss when their height finally caught up to their weight.

Today, things have changed. There are three times as many obese children today then there were in the 1970s. The Institutes of Medicine found that 5% of children 6-11 and 5% of children 12-14 years old were obese. Today, 16.3% of children 6-11 are obese and 16.7% of children 12-14 years old are obese.

What are the causes of the raise in obesity? Less physical activity, fast food diets, excessive snacking and genetics are some of the top causes.

The History Channel is a great source for word origins. I was watching a program about the old west. It seems that orphaned children from the East were taken by adoption guardians who would find homes for them with families. Often siblings were split up and children given to families that would then use them as slave labor. Boys were wanted more than girls and they spent time doing manual labor and chores. Even though the adoption agreements stated that the children were to be educated some didn’t receive any education past the fourth grade. The children were taken into towns and put on stages or platforms for men and women to examine. Thus, the term “up for adoption” was used as the children were raised up above the audience.

Because of this practice and the potential abuse of children, adoption agencies were established many of which still exist today.

Since I am visiting my sister, I get to go through her video collection and watch some of my old favorite movies. After helping make sure her HDMI switch was attached correctly, I pulled out one of my favorite Bob Hope movies – The Princess and the Pirate.

The movie stars Bob Hope as a vaudeville comedian who rescues Virginia Mayo (a princess disguised as a common girl) from a group of pirates. All sorts of slapsticks entails an the movie is quite enjoyable!

The best thing about being on vacation is reading newspapers from other towns. I read in the Seattle Times yesterday that there is a new theory about who D.B. Cooper is. It seems that Ron and Pat Forman of Puyallup, Washington are writing a book entitled “The Legend of D.B. Cooper: Death by Natural Causes.”

In case you forgot, D.B. Cooper highjacked a plane in 1972 out of Seattle and parachuted out of the plane with $200,000 in ransom money. The crime has not been solved.

The Formans claim that they knew a woman by the name of Barb Dayton who is actually D.B. Cooper. Barb was born Bobby Dayton and he decided to have a sex change operation. Barb or Bobby was despressed and suicidal due to his gender problems and decided to highjack the plane. He described in detail how he jumped from the plane in Oregon and hid the money at a farm. When Barb/Bobby died in 2002, the Formans decided to research the tales that she/he had told them and found the stories about boar hunting, sky diving and gold mining to be true. This led the Formans to think that maybe she/he was telling the truth about the highjacking as well.

The FBI does not believe the story though. Barb/Bobby was only 5′ 8″ tall and the flight attendants described D.B. Cooper as being 5′10′ to 6′ tall. Also, there was DNA recovered from a tie clip (although it may not be D.B.’s anyway) and it does not match Barb’s DNA. The Formans however are convinced that the have the right man, or woman!

Fastin was introduced in the marketplace by SmithKline Beecham and contained a generic Phentermine. It was used as an appetite suppressant and was approved by the FDA. It was removed from the market in 1988 but no reason was given. Another product of a similar nature showed up shortly thereafter – Fen Phen. This drug also had to be removed from the marketplace due to users showing elevated blood pressure and damage to heart valves.

The name Taxi Cab came into existence because of a German invention called the taximeter. Originally taxis were just called cabs. In 1891, Wilhelm Bruhn invented the modern taximeter. They were originally mechanically and mounted outside of the cab. Eventually they were mounted inside of the cab. If the cab was called a “Taxi Cab”, potential passengers understood that the cab had use of a taximeter to calculate the fare.

I have caught a few episodes of Big Brother on CBS, I didn’t think much of the show, but what I was really impressed with were the Hideo Wakamatsu luggage that the contestants got to use (did they get to keep it?). It seems that they are one of many sponsors of the show and it is all about product placement. There is nothing better for a product, especially one that does not have a household name, to get featured in a popular television show or movie. Of course, I personally prefer Delsey bags, but we all can’t be stylish now, can we!

Back in the 1930s dust was everywhere! They didn’t have any Air O Swiss humidifiers and I am not sure it would have matter anyway. The farmers were more concerned about their crops than their personal comfort.

The Dust Bowl or dirty thirties was a time of severe dust storms that caused agricultural and ecological damage to the United States and Canada prairies from about 1930 to 1936. There was also a severe drought at the time. Farmers were also not practicing crop rotation and this caused damage to once fertile fields. There was so much dust that at times that clouds of dust could be seen as far east as New York City. Areas of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas were affected for a total of 100,000,000 acres.

By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the affected areas into neighboring states. Almost 200,000 alone moved to California. The plight of these people has been memorialized by John Steinbeck in his book (and subsequent movie starring Henry Fonda), Grapes of Wrath.

Technology has come a long way! Today, I am salivating over the new Nokia N95 8GB phone that looks similar to the iPhone. This cell phone weighs only 4.55 oz. Compare that to the first cell phone which weighed in at 2 pounds!

The first cell phone call was placed on April 3, 1973 by Martin Cooper, then general manager of Motorola’s Communications System Division. The call was placed to Cooper’s rival at AT&T Labs from a New York City street.

The phone only offered one half hour of talk time for every recharging and sold for almost $4,000. Remember how cool we thought Michael Douglas looked in the movie Wall Street talking on his cell phone?

Google Maps is driving by your home! They are updating their maps and are taking pictures of houses and neighborhoods. To see if you house is on the map, simply go to Google Maps and type your address in the search maps box. If there is a picture of your house, it will show up! It won’t be long before this technology is also ported to a GPS and you will actually be able to see the destination before you get there!