Atlanta Falcons

The Atlanta Falcons franchise began on June 30, 1965, when the NFL granted ownership to Rankin Smith Sr. who paid $8.5 million, the highest price in NFL history at the time for a franchise.

The Atlanta team received its nickname in August when Julia Elliott was selected from many people who suggested "Falcons" as the nickname for the new franchise. She wrote: "the Falcon is proud and dignified, with great courage and fight. It never drops its prey. It is deadly and has a great sporting tradition."

But professional football first came to Atlanta in 1962, when the American Football League (AFL) staged two preseason contests, and in 1964 when  the AFL held another exhibition game. In 1965, after the Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium (then known simply as Atlanta Stadium) was built, the city of Atlanta felt the time was right to start pursuing professional football.

Several groups independently applied for franchises in both the AFL and NFL. Some local businessmen were awarded an AFL franchise contingent upon acquiring exclusive stadium rights from city officials. That motivated the NFL to get serious and forced Atlanta officials to make a choice between the two leagues. They went with the NFL.

The NFL had planned to add two teams in 1967, but the competition with the AFL for Atlanta forced Atlanta to be added a year early in 1966. The second expansion team, the New Orleans Saints, joined the NFL as planned in 1967 as its sixteenth franchise.

New Orleans Saints

The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Saints currently compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The team was founded by John W. Mecom Jr., David Dixon, and the city of New Orleans on November 1, 1966.[7] The Saints began play in Tulane Stadium in 1967.

The name "Saints" is an allusion to November 1 being All Saints Day in the Catholic faith. The franchise was founded on November 1, 1966 and New Orleans has a large Catholic population. It also attributed to the spiritual song "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" which is associated with New Orleans jazz and is often sung by fans at games.

They played their home games in Tulane Stadium through the 1974 NFL season and then  moved to the new Louisiana Superdome (now called the Mercedes-Benz Superdome).


Except for minor modifications, the Saints' logo and uniforms have basically remained the same since the club debuted in 1967.

The team's logo is a fleur-de-lis which is a symbol of the City of New Orleans and of France's Royal Family, which included the House of Bourbon).

Their uniform design consists of gold helmets, gold pants, and either black or white jerseys.

Word of the Year

The Oxford Word of the Year for 2018 is "toxic" which is defined as "poisonous."
The collocates (words habitually used alongside toxic) include: chemical, masculinity, substance, environment and even a toxic relationship.

"Toxic" first appeared in English in the mid-seventeenth century. The etymology tracks its poisonous roots. It came from the medieval Latin toxicus, and back to the Latin toxicum, which has origins in the Greek toxikon pharmakon  which was the lethal poison used by the ancient Greeks for smearing on the points of their arrows. It is odd that pharmakon, meaning poison, did not move into Latin here, but toxikon did. The Greek word for "bow" was toxon., though it would seem that a word for arrow would have made more sense for the poison's use. 

Karaoke

Karaoke (and karaoke bars) are a method (and a place) of singing songs by way of a special tape/CD,digital file player that eliminates the vocals from a song and leaves the music. The singer supplies her own vocal rendition of the song, usually with the lyrics appearing synchronized on a screen, much like a teleprompter.

VocoPro CLUB 9009G Professional Club Karaoke System

This is a loan word from Japan, where the activity first gained popularity. Karaoke is a combination of two Japanese words kara meaning empty and the shortened form of the word okesutora  orchestra.

The usage came to prominence outside Japan rapidly in the 1970's as karaoke bars (alcohol being useful to drop stage fright inhibitions, no doubt) and karaoke machines (including those for home use, in case even alcohol won't get you on stage to be Beyonce) became popular around the world.

There are even karaoke systems made for an iPad (below), so you can sing in privacy in the bright acoustics of your home bathroom.



The Late Late Show with James Corden has taken "Carpool Karaoke" - which people have been doing in their cars since cars got radios - to a high professional level. One of my favorites is when James went to Liverpool with Paul McCartney and did a singing tour of the city of Paul's youth. They go to his childhood home where he wrote music with John Lennon. He even performs a few songs in a local pub to an amazed crowd.

With the YouTube closedc aptioning, you can do some karaoke along with James and Paul.

3200 Phaethon

The Fall of Phaëthon on a Roman sarcophagus
 (Hermitage Museum - Wikimedia)

This week will have the best nights for watching the Geminid meteor showers which appear to come from the constellation Gemini, but these showers are caused by the celestial object 3200 Phaethon, which is an asteroid.

That is unusual and this is one of the only major meteor showers not originating from a comet. This asteroid has an orbit that brings it closer to the Sun than any other named asteroid. And that association with the Sun is how the asteroid got its name.

The first asteroids to be discovered were named for characters from classical mythology, but names are no longer restricted strictly to mythological characters.

Phaethon was the Ancient Greek name for the planet Jupiter, a planet whose motions and cycles were observed by the ancients and often used in poetry and myth.

In mythology, Phaethon's father was the sun god Helios who granted his son's wish to drive the sun chariot for a day.  Phaethon was unable to control the horses. To prevent the chariot from hitting and destroying Earth, Zeus knocked it out of the sky with a thunderbolt. Phaethon fell to earth and was killed.

These radar images of near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon were generated by astronomers at the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory on Dec. 17, 2017. Observations of Phaethon were conducted from Dec.15 through 19, 2017, at the time of its closest approaching December 16 when it was about 6.4 million miles or 10.3 million kilometers away, or about 27 times the distance from Earth to the moon. The encounter is the closest the asteroid will come to Earth until 2093.

Source: https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA22185