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May 18 is I Love Reese’s Day

May 18, 2017/0 Comments/in May

Today is I Love Reese’s Day, a celebration of the marriage of chocolate and peanut butter and the visionary who got them together in the first place.

This mascot is creepy, no?

In 1917, Harry Burnett Reese (May 24, 1879 – May 16, 1956) took a job on a dairy farm owned by the Hershey Company and later worked in the candy factory itself.

Inspired, he began to experiment with different candy formulas in his basement, with the intention of making extra money to care for his growing family.

He created the H. B. Reese Candy Company in 1923, selling a large variety of confections. He was so successful that three years later he was able to build a factory as well as a new home.

By 1928, Reese and his wife Blanche had sixteen children. That same year, H. B. Reese invented Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, sometimes called penny cups because they cost one cent apiece. They quickly became his most popular treat.

In response to sugar rationing during World War II, Reese chose to discontinue production of everything but the peanut butter cups, which required less sugar than his other candies. It was a savvy move that guaranteed his family’s prosperity.

Reese died in 1956 at the age of 76, leaving the company to his six sons, Robert, John, Ed, Ralph, Harry, and Charles Richard Reese. In 1963, they decided to sell the business to the Hershey’s Chocolate Company, where Reese had gotten his start close to 50 years before.

Documentation shows the brothers received 666,316 Hershey shares, then valued at $23.5 million. By 2013, after 50 years of stock splits, those shares had become sixteen million shares, valued at more than $1 billion, paying $31 million in annual cash dividends.

In 2010, Hershey sponsored a Facebook petition to declare May 18 I Love Reese’s Day and reported that 40,000 people signed it. Since then, it’s been promoted by the National Peanut Board and reigns as the most popular candy in the United States.

Today, Hershey announced it will introduce a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup stuffed with Reese’s Pieces. Tasty combination or culinary abomination? You decide and, no matter what your favorite is, have a happy I Love Reese’s Day!

May 1 is Law Day

May 1, 2017/0 Comments/in May

Today is Law Day, created in 1957 by American Bar Association (ABA) president Charles S. Rhyne. The following year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower established Law Day to honor the U.S. legal system. Each year, the sitting president signs a new proclamation. In 1961, Congress issued a joint resolution designating May 1st as the official date for celebrating Law Day.

The ABA sponsors educational programs on Law Day. The theme for 2016’s 50th anniversary was “Miranda: More Than Words,” referencing the June 13, 1966, decision by the Supreme Court that anyone in police custody must be explicitly informed of his or her right to remain silent and refrain from making self-incriminating statements before being interrogated.

In 1963, 23-year-old laborer Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Arizona for the kidnapping and rape of a cognitively-impaired teenaged girl. After two hours of intense questioning, he said he had committed the crime and wrote his confession on paper provided to him by the police. The following words were already printed across the top of each sheet: “This statement has been made voluntarily and of my own free will, with no threats, coercion or promises of immunity and with full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make can and will be used against me.”

Miranda hadn’t been told he had a right to an attorney and had no idea he didn’t have to answer the police’s questions. He recanted. Alvin Moore, the lawyer later assigned his case, argued that the confession was illegally obtained and should be excluded from evidence. Moore’s objections were overruled; on the basis of the confession, Miranda was convicted and sentenced to 20 to 30 years. He appealed to the state’s Supreme Court but the conviction was upheld.

When Moore was unable to continue due to medical reasons, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) turned to the law firm of Lewis & Roca in Phoenix, Arizona, to represent Miranda. Criminal defense attorneys John J. Flynn, John P. Frank, Paul G. Ulrich and Robert A. Jensen worked pro bono, drafting and submitting a 2,500-word petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In November 1965, the court agreed to hear the case. Seven months later, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion in Miranda v. Arizona, which concluded that:

The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.

The judgment didn’t mention Miranda, but the wording that evolved became known as the Miranda Warning and the verb Mirandize entered the lexicon. In 1968, the warning’s text was finalized by California deputy attorney general Doris Maier and district attorney Harold Berliner. It reads:

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?

The ABA provides more detail on its website:

The purpose of the Miranda Warning is to ensure the accused are aware of, and reminded of, these rights under the U.S. Constitution, and that they know they can invoke them at any time during the interrogation. Miranda Rights are given under circumstances of “custody” and “interrogation.”
• Custody means formal arrest or the deprivation of freedom to an extent associated with formal arrest.
• Interrogation means explicit questioning or actions that are reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.
• Contrary to what is depicted on many television shows, the police do not need to give the Miranda Warnings before making an arrest. But the warning must be given before interrogating a person while in custody.

Ernesto Miranda’s conviction was overturned but he did not go free. He was tried again using witnesses and other evidence and convicted. After he was granted parole in 1972, he made money autographing the Miranda Warning cards that police were required to carry and recite to suspects. He was arrested for several driving offenses and lost his license. In 1975, he was arrested for possession of a firearm, in violation of his parole. He was sent back to prison for a year. On January 31, 1976, after his release, he got into a bar fight and was stabbed to death.

On June 17, 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Salinas v. Texas that it is not enough to remain silent. Justice Samuel Alito said that the privilege against self-incrimination must be expressly invoked or a prosecutor could use a suspect’s silence against him. Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia stated that they concurred but would have gone further and overruled the 1965 Griffin v. California judgment, in which the Supreme Court decided that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination prohibits a prosecutor or judge from negatively commenting on a defendant’s failure to testify.

Shouldn’t the warning be updated? “You have the right to remain silent but only if you tell us first.” If you don’t answer because you don’t understand or because, frankly, it’s so ironic it sounds like a trick question, does that mean you have waived your rights? It’s like getting tagged out in the schoolyard (“You didn’t say ‘Olly, olly, oxen free‘!”) except in this case you may go to prison for not saying the magic words.

Know your rights, protect those rights and have a safe and happy Law Day!

April 28 is National Cubicle Day

April 28, 2017/0 Comments/in April

Today is National Cubicle Day. Technically, it isn’t a “national” holiday, having never been decreed by Congress and the president. Then again, none of them work in cubicles, so what do they know?

The first cubicle was introduced by furniture company Herman Miller in 1968. Robert Propst designed the “Action Office” as an alternative to working in open areas, often called bullpens. It had flexible configurations with partitions to pin up current projects and provide privacy, lots of desk space and varying desk heights so people could spend some of their time standing up to keep their circulation flowing.

In the real world, Propst’s partitions, meant as building blocks for various layouts, were used to reduce each workspace to the smallest footprint possible to cram even more people into a room. The standing desk detail was abandoned, although it sounds like a good way for a boss to keep an eye out for any slackers trying to take a walk on the company’s dime.

If it ever becomes legal to catheterize a workforce, we’re confident that proximity fences and shock collars will become standard employee retention features of “systems furniture” design. (Eventually, someone will realize folks need to be hydrated and add a hamster-style water bottle to one corner.) Maybe Jon Sanderson had that in mind when he pulled this incredible April Fool’s Day prank on his coworker:

photo: the Chive

Here are a few more cubicles that almost make us want to work in one. Almost. This one is great, but you can’t see that the key to the restroom is attached to the rim:

photo: Study-Spiration

Check out the chair on the left. It has an alien face hugger in it!

photo: Study-Spiration

This one is pretty sweet, right down to the tiki gods.

If you’re worried that you’d get the boot if you jazzed up your office space, you can always splash out on this inflatable Instant Window:

Happy National Cubicle Day, everybody!

April 22 is In God We Trust Day

April 22, 2017/2 Comments/in April

Today is In God We Trust Day. On April 22, 1864, Congress ordered the redesign of the one-cent piece and the minting of a new two-cent coin bearing the motto. On March 3, 1865, Congress passed another act directing the U.S. mint to place the words on all gold and silver coins.

The phrase is often attributed to lawyer Francis Scott Key, who witnessed the British bombardment of Baltimore Harbor on September 13, 1814, during the War of 1812, which lasted much longer than its name suggests.

Key wrote the poem Defence of Fort M’Henry, which was later set to the tune of a popular British song, Anachreon in Heaven, and renamed The Star-Spangled Banner. In the fourth stanza, like many sports fans, Key expresses a belief that God is on our team’s side.

We include the poem in its entirety because, like us, you may not have seen it. We’ve never heard it at a sporting event. It would be cruel and unusual punishment for the fans and for the singer trying to hit the high notes again and again.

Defence of Fort M’Henry

O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there —
O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream —
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havock of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul foot-steps’ pollution,
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home, and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto — “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

On July 30, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law declaring that In God We Trust must appear on all currency. The first paper money bearing the phrase was issued the following year. He also made it the nation’s official motto, replacing E pluribus unum (Latin: Out of many, one), the country’s unofficial slogan since its inclusion on the Great Seal of the United States created in 1782.

Have a happy and healthy In God We Trust Day!

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Defence of Fort M’Henry