“No one can earn a million dollars honestly.” — William Jennings Bryan
Pushbutton Counseling
The Dr. Phil Random Quote Generator has a simple-minded Texas platitude for every occasion:
- “You don’t need stain-resistant pants to join the circus.”
- “You don’t need a rope to learn about proper dental hygiene.”
- “You don’t need help to throw up in Tijuana.”
Truest observation: “You don’t need tap dancing lessons to hate my guts.”
Fractious
The Your Mom! Joke Directory now has a section for math geeks:
Your mom is so stupid she tried to use substitution to find the definite integral of f(x)=x2 over the interval 0
You might want to bring a baseball bat, just in case.
City Lights
Earth’s city lights, seen by satellite. You can make out major transportation networks: the American interstate highway system, the trans-Siberian railroad, the Nile. 100 years after the invention of electric light, only Antarctica is entirely dark.
National and Regional Card Games
From National and Regional Card Games: “Idioten is a game similar to Shithead, which seems to have quite a long tradition in Norway.”
No comment.
Jack the Ripper
This is the “From Hell” letter, sent by Jack the Ripper to the president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee that was pursuing him. He included a bloody fragment to prove his identity:
“I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer”
Whoever he was, Jack certainly had a flair for dramatic horror. But much of his fame is really due to newspapers, which were becoming popular at the time. His crimes, which combined sex, violence, mystery, class warfare and police ineptitude, were tailor-made for cheap sensation. (In fact, it was probably a journalist who invented the “Ripper” nickname.)
Casebook: Jack the Ripper has gathered examples of lurid accounts from as far away as Poland, Jamaica, and Mexico. “All London is ringing with the horror of the thing,” writes one New Zealand editor. “The woman who reads, with hair standing on end, the details of some fresh outrage to-night cannot feel sure that on the morrow she may not be the next victim.” The whole episode is a low point for responsible journalism.
BTW, today the Ripper’s story has spawned a rather unwholesome fanbase, with concentration games, crossword puzzles, and fan fiction. Somehow time can make even serial murder seem quaint.
Theseus and the Minotaur
Theseus and the Minotaur is a series of Java-based puzzles in which you have to escape a maze without getting mashed by a computerized monster that moves predictably. There are 14 levels, and I can’t get past level 4.
The interesting thing is that the puzzles were designed by a computer, and they’re now being used in AI experiments at the National University of Ireland. So computers are now solving puzzles designed by other computers.
Origins of Band Names
And here’s a list of the origins of band names:
- Spandau Ballet was a Nazi guards’ term for the contortions of Jewish prisoners being gassed to death. There was a large gas chamber in the city of Spandau.
- The Red Hot Chili Peppers were originally called Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem.
- Pantera is Portuguese for “panther.”
- Oingo Boingo is Swahili for “thinking while dancing.”
- The Eagles were originally going to call themselves Teen King and the Emergencies.
- Def Leppard got its name from Joe Elliot’s drawing of a leopard with no ears.
Hang On Sloopy
Apparently Ohio’s official state rock song is “Hang On Sloopy.”
I don’t know if that’s the best song that ever came out of Ohio, but the resolution that proposed it is priceless:
If fans of jazz, country-and-western, classical, Hawaiian and polka music think those styles also should be recognized by the state, then by golly, they can push their own resolution just like we’re doing.
Washington has better taste — it chose “Louie Louie.”
Self-Defense With a Cane
Here’s a little light reading before you go strolling downtown: “Self-Defence With a Walking-Stick: The Different Methods of Defending Oneself With a Walking-Stick or Umbrella When Attacked Under Unequal Conditions.” It originally ran in Pearson’s Magazine in January 1901.
Apparently those things were pretty deadly: If you use your wrists and swing from the hip, “it is possible to sever a man’s jugular vein through the collar of his overcoat.”