Product Placement

Each team in the Philippine Basketball Association is owned by a corporation. This makes for some colorful team names:

  • The Powerade Tigers
  • The Rain or Shine Elasto Painters
  • The Shopinas.com Clickers
  • The Talk ‘N Text Tropang Texters
  • The Alaska Aces
  • The Barangay Ginebra Kings
  • The Barako Bull Energy
  • The B-Meg Llamados
  • The Meralco Bolts
  • The Petron Blaze Boosters

Defunct teams include the Toyota Super Corollas, the Sta. Lucia Realtors, the Shell Turbo Chargers, the Pop Cola Panthers, and the Great Taste Coffee Makers. Between 1980 and 1986, the national team was called Northern Consolidated Cement.

(Thanks, Ethan.)

| Language

Missionary Work

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puckle_gun_advertisement.jpg

When James Puckle patented a flintlock machine gun in 1718, he offered two versions. The first, to be used against Christian enemies, fired round bullets. The second, to be used against Turks, fired square bullets, which were thought to be more damaging.

This, Puckle wrote, would convince the Turks of the “benefits of Christian civilization.”

| Technology

So There

One also can’t help mentioning in this context the nineteenth century American novelist who inspired irreverent punsters to announce that they were going to Helen Hunt Jackson’s grave. Typical of the Helen Hunt anecdotes in oral circulation is the one about Mrs. Jackson who, while still Hunt, is said to have once found a money purse in a church pew after the morning’s service. The preacher, when she informed him of it, advised her to hold on to it and that he’d announce it at the evening’s service. That night, he addressed the congregation to the effect that a money purse had been found in the church and that the owner can go to Helen Hunt for it. The preacher, we are told, was met with a tittering response from his congregation.

— Robert M. Rennick, “Obscene Names and Naming in Folk Tradition,” in Names and Their Varieties, 1986

| Language

Authors on Authors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Wilde_time_3.jpg

Oscar Wilde on Charles Dickens:

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

Joseph Conrad on Herman Melville:

“He knows nothing of the sea. Fantastic — ridiculous.”

John Dryden on John Donne:

“Were he translated into numbers, and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression.”

Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad:

“I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir-shop style, bottled ships and shell necklaces of romantic clichés.”

Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe:

“An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

H.G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw:

“An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”

Gustave Flaubert on George Sand:

“A great cow full of ink.”

Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac:

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

| Literature

Stormy Weather

stormy weather puzzle - 1

Stephen Barr observes that a pitched roof receives less rain per unit area than level ground does. This seems to mean that rain that falls at a slant will be less wetting than rain that falls vertically. Why isn’t this so?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles