| Daily almanac - Columbus Dispatch Posted: 25 Dec 2009 12:19 AM PST Today is Friday, Dec. 25, the 359th day of 2009. There are six days left in the year. This is Christmas Day. Highlights in History • On Dec. 25, 1818, Silent Night was performed for the first time, at the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria. • In A.D. 336, the first recorded celebration of Christmas on Dec. 25 took place in Rome. • In 1066, William the Conqueror was crowned king of England. • In 1776, Gen. George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River for a surprise attack against Hessian forces at Trenton, N.J. • In 1926, Hirohito became emperor of Japan, succeeding his father, Emperor Yoshihito. • In 1941, during World War II, Japan announced the surrender of the British-Canadian garrison at Hong Kong. • In 1989, ousted Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed following a popular uprising. • In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on television to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of a communist superpower that had already gone out of existence. • Ten years ago: Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts finished their repair job on the Hubble Space Telescope. • Five years ago: President George W. Bush urged Americans to help the neediest among them by volunteering to care for the sick, the elderly and the poor. • One year ago: President-elect Barack Obama spent a private Christmas Day with family and friends in Hawaii. Thought for Today "It is Christmas every time you let God love others through you. Yes, it is Christmas every time you smile at your brother and offer him your hand." -- Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-97) Source: Associated Press
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| First-ever UP almanac makes the perfect holiday gift - Toledo Blade Posted: 25 Dec 2009 06:39 AM PST LANSING - Well, Christmas has arrived, whether we were ready or not. But what if you still need a last-minute present for that brother-in-law you aren't going to see for a couple of days?
Or what if you now want to buy yourself a present, having done your part to help both the American and Chinese economies by buying loads of Zhu-Zhu hamsters?
Well, look no more. The must-have book of the year has arrived, and it is a sensation. I'm talking about the first-ever Michigan's Upper Peninsula Almanac, by veteran writers Ron Jolly and Karl Bohnak, just published by the University of Michigan Press.
If you are not a longtime Michigander, you should know that the Upper Peninsula, normally referred to by the initials UP, is seen as a faintly exotic and somewhere quaint land, full of ghost towns, abandoned mines, and elk.
What it doesn't have much of is humans. Twice the size of New Jersey, the entire Upper Peninsula has only about 308,000 people, 3 percent of Michigan's population. That's just about as many people as Toledo has, but that's where the similarity ends.
Two-thirds of "Yoopers" are completely rural, or live in towns of 2,000 people or less. The people they call "trolls" (those who live "under" the Mackinac Bridge) think of them as folks who mostly wear red flannel and hunting caps. (When I asked a Yooper friend what they thought of us, he said they tried not to.)When I realized that there really was an Upper Peninsula almanac, I expected it might be a parody, like the movie Escanaba in Da Moonlight, or those bumper stickers that say, mocking the state's official slogan in Yooper dialect, "Say ya to da UP, eh?"
But when my almanac arrived, I couldn't put it down. True, you wouldn't want to drop it on your foot; it weighs a couple of pounds. But it is also riveting; 580 pages full of, yes, crazy and bizarre stuff, but also fascinating history, reference material, and more information about the UP than you thought existed, attractively packaged.
Yoopers are famous for a crescent-shaped meat pie called a pasty, which they used to eat down in the copper and iron mines. And indeed, there is a picture here of the world's biggest-ever pasty, which contained 400 pounds of potatoes, 250 pounds of meat, and enough dough to take everybody in the state up a size.
You can also learn about the world's largest concrete Frosty the Snowman, which is in Alger County, and find out everything you never wanted to know about the "world's biggest annual outhouse race," also in Alger, which may be recreation-challenged.
However, there's also lots of important stuff about the UP's geography, history, wildlife, and distinct culture.
In fact, the Yoopers have had an impact on Michigan far out of proportion to their numbers. I talked to one of the authors of this book about this; Ron Jolly, a well-known radio newsman from the northern Lower Peninsula. To write this book, he teamed up with perhaps the UP's best known weatherman, Karl Bohnak.
"Karl did the weather, obviously," Mr. Jolly said. Weather, indeed, is big in the UP. According to the almanac, in some parts of Marquette County the interval between the last spring frost and the first fall freeze can be as little as four days.
That makes for a short growing season. For both men, the almanac was a three-year labor of love. Mr. Jolly said he especially loved the incredible ethnic diversity of the UP: Germans and Swedes and Finns; Native Americans, and the descendants of the Cornish and Welsh miners who came to hew iron and copper out of the earth.
All told, it's enough to make you wish you had a Stormy Kromer (a Yooper winter hat) to pull over your ears so you could trudge off to the bookstore to pick up an Upper Peninsula almanac.
You never know. Mom might have a hot pasty awaiting when you get home. Hopefully, a normal-sized one.
Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade's ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.
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| HDTV Almanac - Happy Holidays! - HDTV Magazine Posted: 25 Dec 2009 05:34 AM PST As you read this, I may be curled up with a cup of cocoa and a grandchild in my lap. It's a safe bet that I won't be at my computer, however. I wrote this holiday greeting beforehand and set it on autopilot to be delivered to you today. If you celebrate Christmas, I hope that yours is a merry one. If you celebrate some other holiday at this time of year, I wish you all the best. May all of you have a wonderful, relaxing, and renewing holiday season. And thank you for your support of the HDTV Almanac; it's my gift to you and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy bringing it to you. All best wishes, Alfred Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| On the Santa Claus Rally and Other Year-End, New-Year Indicators - Seekingalpha.com Posted: 25 Dec 2009 05:13 AM PST If Santa has not yet made his way to your investment portfolio, don't despair. According to Jeffrey Hirsch (Stock Trader's Almanac), the "Santa Claus Rally" normally occurs during the last five trading days of a year and the ensuing first two trading sessions of the new year. During this seven-day period stocks historically tend to advance (by 1.5% on average since 1950), but when recording a loss, they frequently trade much lower in the new year. Well, yesterday marked the official beginning of the Santa Claus Rally period, with the Dow Jones Industrial Index off to a 0.5% start. 
Another old stock market saw tells us the first five trading days of January sets the course for January (known as the "First Five Days Early Warning System"), and if the month of January is higher, there is a good chance the year will end higher, i.e. the so-called "January Barometer". Every down January since 1950 has been followed by a new or continuing bear market or a flat year. "As January goes, so goes the year," said Hirsch. Lastly, according to Hirsch, the "December Low Indicator" says that should the Dow Jones Industrial Index close below its December low anytime during the first quarter, it is frequently an excellent warning sign of lower levels ahead. The number to watch is the low of 10,286 recorded by the Dow on December 8. Time will tell whether the year-end/new-year indicators play out according to the historical pattern. Meanwhile, we'll have some fun tracking how it pans out. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Alabama casinos go upscale to rival Mississippi - Mercury Posted: 25 Dec 2009 03:11 AM PST By Phillip Rawls, Associated Press Writer 
Mae Childers of Alexander City, Ala., seated, celebrating a win on an electronic bingo machine as her friend, Ina Lay of Dadeville, Ala., watches at Victoryland in Shorter, Ala. AP Photo SHORTER, Ala. (AP) — Alabama casinos are making a $500 million bet that luxury hotels, celebrity restaurants and big-name entertainment will give southbound tourists an alternative to Mississippi's Gulf Coast gambling destinations.
Tourists headed through Alabama to the Gulf can now stop at top-line restaurants opened by country singers John Anderson and Lorrie Morgan, catch big-name entertainers like Hank Williams Jr. and Reba McEntire, and gamble in pricey new digs that look like they belong in Las Vegas rather than rural, Bible-belt Alabama.
"We are not a pass-through corridor any more," developer Ronnie Gilley said.
Alabama's casinos don't have slot machines and table games like the casinos in Mississippi. Instead, they are filled with electronic bingo machines, which resemble slot machines with their flashing lights and quick play. The experience can be much the same as slots.
Gambling expert Bill Eadington of the University of Nevada at Reno said Alabama's new attractions have a lot of potential because they are located on major travel routes, and their opening is likely to be felt next door in Mississippi, with its Gulf Coast casino row.
"The more supply you have, the more difficulty you have capturing customers," Eadington said.
The Alabama developers' multimillion-dollar gamble is not just about pulling customers away from Mississippi. Courts in the state are hearing lawsuits challenging the legality of electronic bingo in some counties, and Eadington, director of UNR's Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, said some counties are on shaky legal ground.
But that hasn't stopped the growth in Alabama.
Milton McGregor cut the ribbon Dec. 9 on a 300-room luxury hotel at this Victoryland complex in Shorter, about 20 miles east of Montgomery on Interstate 85. His Oasis hotel will be followed in the new year by a 1,500-seat entertainment center and convention complex.
The hotel and its additions are a $100 million investment in a gambling complex that started with a dog track 25 years ago.
Victoryland opened a modern casino in 2005 and kept expanding until it now houses 6,400 electronic bingo machines — more than any single casino in Nevada, New Jersey or Mississippi has slots, according to Casino City's North American Gaming Almanac.
McGregor said he built the hotel — and has two more in the planning stages — because visitors demanded Victoryland be more than a stopover for a few hours.
"In order to be where we needed to be and wanted to be, we had to become a destination point," McGregor said.
So far, it's paying off, he said, with 40 percent of the weekend business coming from out of state. That compares to about 70 percent for Mississippi casinos.
Country Crossing in the southeast corner of the state opened its $87 million first phase on Dec. 1, with more new attractions in the new year pushing the total investment over $200 million.
A country music-themed complex south of Dothan looks very different from Victoryland.
Country Crossing uses an architectural style that blends TV's "Mayberry" and "Petticoat Junction" into a made-from-scratch small town. This hamlet just happens to offer restaurants named for country singers, an inn called George Jones' Possum Holler, a concert amphitheater, an RV park, and electronic bingo machines.
For now, Gilley, the developer, is hoping to get tourists to stop briefly on their way to and from the beach on U.S. 231. He's expecting that to start changing when he opens two hotels, a water park, a bowling alley and family entertainment center next year.
"We expect in the next five years we will become a destination and the beach will become a day trip," he said.
Alabama's Poarch Band of Creek Indians opened the $245 million Wind Creek complex at Atmore in January. In addition to electronic bingo, it features a 236-room upscale hotel, four restaurants, an amphitheater with major headliners, and a cooking studio directed by award-winning chef Stafford DeCambra, who previously worked at a Mississippi casino.
Wind Creek sits along Interstate 65, a major route to Gulf Coast beaches and Mississippi's coastal casinos, and its 17-story hotel has become a landmark towering above the rural area's vast stretches of pine forests.
"From the beginning, we were intent on providing patrons with an experience incomparable to anything else offered in the region," Jay Dorris, president of Poarch Creek Indian Gaming, said at the opening.
So far, Alabama casinos are drawing primarily from Alabama, Georgia and Florida.
The executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission, Larry Gregory, said Alabama's new attractions "have had very little impact on our market over here."
Gregory said Mississippi offers clusters of casinos, with multiple entertainers and amenities to choose from — an aggregate convenience Alabama doesn't have.
That doesn't bother Mae Childers and Ina Lay, two Alabama widows who were playing recently at Victoryland. They said they used to travel out of state to gamble, but now spend their money in Alabama.
"I've been to Biloxi, Tunica, Las Vegas and Atlantic City. This compares favorably," said Childers, 72, of Alexander City.
"It's like some of the casinos in Las Vegas," said Lay, 74, of Dadeville.
At Country Crossing, retiree George Carter of Bruce, Fla., said playing electronic bingo took some adjustment because, unlike slot machines, it requires more than one push of a button each game. But he had nothing but compliments for his surroundings.
"This used to be farm field. Now it's a nice place," he said.
If You Go...
VICTORYLAND: Located on Interstate 85 in Shorter, Ala., about 20 miles each of Montgomery. Offers 300-room Oasis hotel, offers several restaurants, including Whitfield's Steakhouse, live dog racing and simulcast horse racing besides electronic bingo; http://www.victoryland.com or 334-727-0540.
COUNTRY CROSSING: Located on U.S. 231 about eight miles south of Dothan. Offers country music-themed restaurants and live entertainment; http://www.countrycrossingalabama.com or 877-507-7779.
WIND CREEK: Located on Interstate 65 at Atmore, about 50 miles northeast of Mobile. Offers luxury hotel, buffet and restaurants, live entertainment and cooking lessons; http://windcreekcasino.com or 866-946-3360. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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