7/4/you don\'t like Charlotte. *sweatdrop* Otherwise, nothing new.
6/3/01 - Update to the other stuff in Aurora Beoralis. Yes, I have WAY too much way around him, a shinbone went from his ankle to above his knee, and a jaw - with bodacious molars - went over his own. Its first owner had probably stood eight feet tall.
Stafford Cleveland’s History and Directory of Yates County refers to skeletons from a conical burial mound by Keuka Lake in the early 1800’s. A Penn Yan doctor found that many were seven footers. (Tales of ghosts and buried treasure cling to this vicinity as well.)
Turner’s History of the Holland Purchase reports an ancient three-acre earth fort in Orleans county (about one and a half miles west of Shelby Center) that covered seven- and eight-foot skeletons. Their skulls were well developed in front, broad between the ears, and flattened on top. Also, Turner notes that, upon digging a cellar on his town of Aurora farm, Charles P. Pierson found a giant of his own.
The 1879 History of Allegany County noted a circular mound between Philip’s Creek and the Genesee in the village of Belmont. Several feet high and fifteen or so in diameter, it disgorged human bones, some very large, when the railroad was made in 1849 and 1850.
Giant human skeletons don’t ring any bells with us. Some think the Scandinavians were in Western New York, and they were considered virtual giants in the ancient world (whose people were traditionally much shorter than those now). Many Vikings would seem tall even today, but they were not routinely seven-footers.
Not all the humanlike skeletons found about the Western Door were so surely human. Several old histories discuss the two very bizarre skulls taken in the early 1820’s from a mound on Tonawanda Island near Buffalo. One early writer notes each "portentous, protruding lower jaw and canine forehead." Another adds that the burial customs were entirely unlike those of the region’s natives.
Our County and Its People (Truman C. White, 1898) mentions skeletons that seem to have been "platycnemic" - flat-shinned. In the bluff at Fort Porter (Buffalo) one such skeleton was found near ancient implements. Burials of up to three such skeletons have been found high up on river or lake banks about the region. Their flat shins and "other skeletal peculiarities" were thought due to climbing and living in trees. These are odd stories to make up.
In nature’s evident experiments toward Homo sapiens, some of the discontinued models were very large (Gigantopithecus comes to mind); none are thought to have set foot or dragged knuckle on any American soil. Jess Stearn (in Montezuma’s Serpent) cites finds from the American southwest implying some giant, bestial hominid was here. Jim Brandon’s Weird America lists two such accounts from just outside the Western Door. An eight-footer turned up in an Ellisburg, PA mound (near Wellsville, NY) in 1886. The same year a team of professors and professionals found dozens of huge, oddly-skulled humans in a mound in Sayre, PA (near Elmira, NY). They averaged seven feet, though some were taller, and some had horny knobs on their foreheads. Several went to the American Investigating Museum in Philadelphia, into which they disappeared. Modern fans of Bigfoot (seen in almost all the states of the Union) might rejoice at historical testimony of monster bones; for the rest of us the matter is just... weird.
Mason C. Winfield is the author of "Shadows of the Western Door," a research-survey of Western New York\'s paranormal mysteries. The book included information on ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, ancient mysteries, giant skeletons, secret societies, cult activity, etc. "Shadows of the Western Door" is available at Buffalo Books
Most people have a junk drawer, but I\'m proud to say that I have a junk closet. The only time it\'s ever cleaned out is when I move. Since that doesn\'t happen too often, you can imagine the mess in there. This closet just happens to be the place where I store all of those things that I have purchased, but never found a use for. These were deals that just seemed to good to be true when I first came across them.
A Davis, California civil engineer named David Phillips found himself in a similar boat in May of 1999. While cruising the aisles of his local supermarket one day, a promotion for Healthy Choice foods caught his eye. The deal was quite simple: For every ten Universal Price Codes that were sent in to the company, the customer would receive 500 frequent flyer miles. And, if the UPC codes were mailed out by May 31, the value of the labels would be doubled.
Phillips did some quick math in his head and was sure that he had stumbled across a deal that was too hard to resist. He had been considering taking his family to Europe that summer, so why not eat their way there?
Clearly, the cheaper he could get the Healthy Choice products, the lower the cost of the family\'s vacation. His first discovery was cans of Healthy Choice soup at about ninety cents each. He loaded his cart with the cans and proceeded to the checkout.
His next step was to drive over to the local Grocery Store Outlet, a chain of warehouse-style supermarkets that specialize in overstock and discontinued merchandise. The store was selling Healthy Choice chocolate pudding at twenty-five cents apiece. And, to top that off, each container had its own UPC code. He quickly purchased the store\'s entire inventory.
Having hit the mother lode, David then continued on to the remaining ten Grocery Store Outlet stores in his area. When they all ran out of pudding, David requested that the store manager bring in an additional sixty cases. His final take was 12,150 containers of pudding. Do a little bit of math and you will quickly realize that he was eligible for 1,215,000 frequent flyer miles!
Now, can you imagine what your neighbors would think if you carried over 12,000 containers of pudding into your home. First, they would probably conclude that you were either crazy or perverted. Then they would think up all kinds of strange uses for the pudding. Could they be using it for pudding wrestling? Pudding baths? Could they actually be eating it? David\'s answer was perfect: They were stocking up for Y2K.
But, there was one hitch. The May 31st deadline was quickly approaching. His family could not peel the labels and fill out the required reimbursement forms fast enough.
What to do? What to do?
David had the perfect answer. He donated the remaining pudding to local food banks and the Salvation Army. In exchange, their volunteers would peel off all of the UPC codes and give them back to him.
Once all of the coupons were ready to go, they were mailed off to Healthy Choice. David wasn\'t sure that the company would honor the deal, and when they didn\'t send him the airline miles in a reasonable amount of time, he began to get nervous. He called the company and they claimed that they had never received the package. Luckily, David had sent the package by registered mail and had photographs to prove his purchases. Shortly thereafter, the company mailed him his certificates.
In the end, David and his family collected 1, 253,000 miles from his puddings and soups. He split 216,000 of the miles among Delta, United, and Northwest airlines. The remaining 1,037,000 miles were posted to his American Airlines account. And since he topped the million mile mark, he automatically became a lifelong member of American Airlines AAdvantage Gold club. David now has lifetime access to a priority reservation number, priority boarding, and additional perks.
Healthy Choice\'s cost for David\'s travel bonanza is estimated to be around two cents per mile or a little over $25,000. David\'s cost, however, was only $3,140.
I guess that sometimes deals that sound too good to be true can actually be true!
Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
Several years ago I had a student named Daegan who kept bugging me with the same comment every time that I did a demonstration for the class. Basically, he said that he would not be happy until I set my tie on fire. After months of hearing this comment repeated, I finally decided to make his wish come true. I designed a new demonstration where I took my ugliest tie, soaked it in rubbing alcohol, and then set it ablaze. Daegen was not impressed, however, because the tie was still intact after the fire went out. He wanted the tie to be burned to a crisp. I, on the other hand, wanted to teach some science. (As I tell all of my students, please do not try this at home!)
Obviously, there is some sort of deception going on with my tie experiment. Without revealing my secret, let\'s just say that the alcohol was not what it appeared to be. This tie trick does, however, lead me to the one demonstration that my students seem to remember for life. This one also has a bit of magic to it. And, because it involves something known as a suicide plug, I am not going to tell you exactly how to do it. In other words, don\'t try this one at home, either.
Every school year, my last demo is always what my students refer to as the “electrocution of a pickle”. Basically, this works on a principle very similar to that of frying someone in an electric
