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Why you gotta upstage me, Mallon? Fight me irl!
:)
I don't exist IRL.
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Gandalf the Grey and Winnie the Pooh have the same middle name.
It's "Albert."
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The main character of the webcomic Erfworld is named "Parson Gotti," which is an anagram of "protagonist."
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Despite near-constant touring and recording for over 40 years with the same lineup, there is currently only one original member of Rush still in the band. The band was originally formed in 1968 by lead guitarist Alex Lifeson, and consisted of Lifeson, bassist/vocalist Jeff Jones, and drummer John Rutsey.
Jeff Jones was quickly replaced with bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee, who has sung and played bass ever since, aside from a brief span in 1969 where he was replaced by Joe Perna. John Rutsey stayed on drums until 1974, when he was replaced temporarily by Gerry Fielding, and then permanently by Neil Peart.
During the years 1969-1972, Rush also briefly featured keyboardist Lindy Young and rhythm guitarist Mitchel Bossi.
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Potato is the only word in the English language to start with "P" and end with "otato".
Wrong! There is also Perota... um...
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Potato is the only word in the English language to start with "P" and end with "otato".Wrong! There is also Perota... um...
There's also Pambledingtotato, which was originally a Lincolnshire dialect word for the man who laces on your codpiece for you when you can't reach, but it's entirely obsolete (outside of Lincolnshire)
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There's also Pambledingtotato, which was originally a Lincolnshire dialect word for the man who laces on your codpiece for you when you can't reach, but it's entirely obsolete (outside of Lincolnshire)Potato is the only word in the English language to start with "P" and end with "otato".Wrong! There is also Perota... um...
Damn that lying Facebook meme!!!!
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The English word "football" (a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with the foot to score a goal) may mean any one of several team sports (or the ball used in that respective sport).
The sports most frequently referred to as simply "football" are association football (soccer), American football, Australian rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, rugby league football, and rugby union football.
Depending on the national or regional origin and location of the person using the word, different football sports may be referred to by a range of terms--unqualified use of the word "football" is used to refer to the most popular code of football in that region.
In each of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, one football code is known solely as "football", while the others generally require a qualifier. In New Zealand, "football" historically referred to rugby union, but more recently may be used unqualified to refer to association football.
The sport meant by the word "football" in Australia is either Australian rules football or rugby league, depending on popularity (Australia's association football governing body changed its name in 2005 from using "soccer" to "football," but "soccer" remains the more popular term in common usage).
In francophone Quebec, where Canadian football is more popular, the Canadian code is known as "football" while American football is known as "Football américain" and association football is known as "le soccer." Elsewhere in Canada, "football" often refers to both American and Canadian football interchangeably in common speech.
Of the 45 national FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) affiliates in which English is an official or primary language, most currently use "Football" in their organizations' official names. However, the FIFA affiliates in Canada and the United States use "Soccer" instead.
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During the Viking incursions into Muslim Iberia during the 800s AD, the contemporary Islamic historians somehow got the impression that the Norsemen revered fire similar to the Persians of the time, and referred to them in contemporary texts as al-madjus ("Magi," or less specifically, "Zoroastrians").
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The origin of the English word "gun" is considered to derive from the name given to a particular historical weapon, Domina Gunilda, a massive ballista (a crossbow-like torsion spring artillery piece) mounted at Windsor Castle during the 14th century. This name in turn may have derived from the Old Norse woman's proper name Gunnhildr which combines two Norse words, gunnr and hildr, both meaning "war" or "battle" (Gunnr and Hildr were also both names of Valkyries in the Old Norse tradition). By the late 14th or early 14th century, the term gonne or gunne was applied to artillery and early hand-held firearms.
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Scientists have confirmed the presence of milk in milkshakes.
Also, less frequently, bacon.
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Braxton Bragg, a general in the army of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, had a reputation for being a strict disciplinarian and one who adhered to regulations literally. There is a famous, apocryphal story, included in the memoirs of United States President (formerly General) Ulysses S. Grant, about Bragg as a company commander in the pre-war United States Army at a frontier post where he also served as quartermaster.
According to Grant, Bragg submitted a requisition for supplies for his company, then as quartermaster declined to fill it. As company commander, he resubmitted the requisition, giving additional reasons for his requirements, but as the quartermaster he denied the request again. Realizing that he was at a personal impasse, he referred the matter to the post commandant, who exclaimed, "My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarreling with yourself!"
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Some historical events seem like a long time ago, but reading lists of long-lived war veterans can really put things into perspective:
The last surviving undisputed American veteran of the American Revolutionary War was John Gray (b. 1764, Mt. Vernon Plantation, Colony of Virginia, British Empire), who served as an infantryman in the Continental Army during the last months of the war and was present at the Siege of Yorktown. After the war, he built a homestead in the Ohio Territory and farmed his land for many years. Gray died in 1868 in Noble Township, Ohio, at the age of 104.
The last surviving combat veteran of the American Civil War was James Albert Hard (b. 1843, Victor, New York, USA), who served as a member of the 37th New York "Irish Rifles" Volunteer Infantry Regiment and fought as an infantryman (private) at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg), and the Battle of Chancellorsville. Post-war, Hard worked for 38 years as a notary. Hard died in 1953 in Rochester, New York, at the age of 109.
The last surviving undisputed veteran of the American Civil War was Albert Henry Woolson (b. 1850, Antwerp, New York. USA), who enlisted as a drummer boy in the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Heavy Artillery Regiment. The 1st Minnesota volunteers were assigned to the garrison at Chattanooga late in the war, and never saw action. After the war, Woolson worked as a carpenter and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic fraternal organization. Woolson died in 1956 in Duluth, Minnesota, at the age of 106.
The last surviving American veteran of the First World War was Frank Woodruff Buckles (b. 1901, Bethany, Missouri, USA), who served as an ambulance driver (private) with the US Army's 1st Fort Riley Casual Detachment, first in England, and then on the Western Front. Buckles was discharged from the Army in 1919 with the rank of corporal, and worked as a ship's purser for various shipping companies. In 1942, he was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army during the invasion of the Philippines, and remained a civilian POW until freed by the US Army Airborne during the Raid at Los Baños in 1945. After his internment, Buckles returned to the United States and worked as a farmer until his death in 2011 in Charles Town, West Virginia, at the age of 110.
Points of reference:
- John Gray was born during the reign of George III of the United Kingdom, shortly before the foundation of the city of St. Louis, Missouri, and died after the end of the American Civil War, during the presidency of Andrew Johnson.
- James Hard was born during the presidency of John Tyler, during the height of the popularity of writer Edgar Allan Poe, and died a few months before the end of the Korean War, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- Albert Woolson was born a few weeks before the incorporation of the city of Los Angeles, California, during the presidency of Zachary Taylor, and died a month before Elvis Presley first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- Frank Buckles was born just before the incorporation of baseball's American League (one of the two leagues of Major League Baseball), during the presidency of William McKinley, and died a few days after the final launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, during the presidency of Barack Obama.
James Hard died the year my paternal grandparents were married. My mother was born almost exactly one year after the death of Albert Woolson. Frank Buckles died when I was a sophomore in college. History happens fast.
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That's why "long ago" is a term not used while discussing history of USA outside of USA ;)
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During the Viking incursions into Muslim Iberia during the 800s AD, the contemporary Islamic historians somehow got the impression that the Norsemen revered fire similar to the Persians of the time, and referred to them in contemporary texts as al-madjus ("Magi," or less specifically, "Zoroastrians").
Could those be worshipers of Loki?
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I like the way you think!Scientists have confirmed the presence of milk in milkshakes.Also, less frequently, bacon.
"I'm usually the one screaming for change and innovation. But there's a difference between "innovation" and "putting bacon in a milkshake."
- Noah "Spoony" Antwiler| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
That's why "long ago" is a term not used while discussing history of USA outside of USA ;)
"The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way."
- Earle Hitchner"I was looking down from Mt. Olive, and Michael the tour guide guy is like, "See over there? That's the last place Jesus Christ was ever seen walking." And when you live on an American 400-year time clock, when a place Jimi Hendrix once played blows your mind, when you walk into a place and find out that you're standing on the same stage that Led Zeppelin played in 1969 in front of 400 college students, you're like, "Whoa. Whoa." You know? When he says, "Oh, J.C. was seen over there, you just go, "F+#*. F*!~."
- Henry Rollins, A Rollins In The Wry
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That's why "long ago" is a term not used while discussing history of USA outside of USA ;)
This is more of a tangent than anything else, but it sort of relates to an experience I had at the independent record label where I work.
In the last few years, at least in the punk & indie rock scenes, vinyl records and cassette tapes have been making a comeback for some reason. The label president and I had a booth at a record fair, and next to us was another booth with a couple of college kids from Syracuse University, real hipster-types, and probably a decade younger than either of us (and neither I nor the label head are particularly old).
The label head and I were having a conversation with the organizer of the record fair about the resurgence of cassettes, and all the while, one of the young college guys was edging closer and closer. Expressing my disdain for the resurgence of cheap, crappy tape media, I made a crack amounting to something like, "What next, are LaserDiscs going to be making a comeback now?" To which the college kid butted in, "I saw a LaserDisc once." Good for you, kid, good for you.
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The oldest known palindrome is the "Sator Square", scratched on a wall in Herculaneum, a city destroyed by the explosion of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79.
.
.
.
.
.
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
(The sower Arepo holds back the wheels with great difficulty.)
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The oldest known palindrome is the "Sator Square", scratched on a wall in Herculaneum, a city destroyed by the explosion of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. (The sower Arepo holds back the wheels with great difficulty.)
Two additional common translations read: "The farmer Arepo works a plough," or "The sower works for mastery by turning the wheel." Some early examples of the squares show the phrase reversed, reading "ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR", and are known as Rotas Squares. Since word order in Latin is essentially free, the translation remains the same.
The oldest datable representations of the Sator Square were found in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Others were found in excavations in Rome, at Corinium (in Britain), and at Dura-Europos (in modern Syria). An example of the Sator Square found in Manchester dating to the 2nd century is one of the earliest pieces of evidence of Christianity in Britain.
By repositioning the letters around the central letter Ν, a Greek cross can be made that reads "Pater Noster" (Latin for "Our Father", the first two words of the Lord's Prayer) both vertically and horizontally. The remaining letters – two each of A and O – can be taken to represent the concept of Alpha and Omega, a reference in Christianity to the omnipresence of God. Thus, the square might have been used as a covert symbol for early Christians to express their presence to each other.
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Examples of palindromes given by their Wikipedia entry include:
Eva, can I stab bats in a cave?
Mr. Owl ate my metal worm
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
A nut for a jar of tuna
Do geese see God?
Ma is as selfless as I am
On a clover, if alive, erupts a vast pure evil, a fire volcano
Dammit, I'm mad!
Dog, as a devil deified, lived as a god
A Toyota's a Toyota
Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog
A Santa lived as a devil at NASA
An igloo! Cool, Gina!
Rats live on no evil star
Live on time, emit no evil
You have no name, Manon Eva Huoy!
and
T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad; I'd assign it a name: gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet.
Six of the palindromes on this list were included in the Weird Al Yankovic song "Bob" from his 2003 album Poodle Hat. "Bob," a "style parody" of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, consists only of palindromes, and was the only song from the album to have a music video. The music video itself is a parody of the promo video that was shot for D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 documentary Dont Look Back, detailing Dylan's second tour of England, including Bob Dylan's song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", which was included on Pennebaker's film.
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Live, O Devil! Revel ever! Live! Do evil!
Emu love volume!
Race laser if flow erupts
I'm raft I'm muse--ew! Rent rape us
Awash, crane dragon sits, but rat is bonked
I trap a spine, man, tinker on!
Emu love volume!
Sit in it now, I won't sulk 'cus
Stuck cab sleep, one man rusts
A last surname, no, peels back cuts
Suck lust now, I won tin, it is
Emu love volume!
No reknit name nips a part
I deknob sitar tubs, 'tis no garden arch
Saw a sue partner, wee summit far
Mist-pure wolf, fire sale car
Emu love volume!
- Rone Barton, Emu Love Volume (2002). The entire poem is a single long palindrome.
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That's why "long ago" is a term not used while discussing history of USA outside of USA ;)This is more of a tangent than anything else, but it sort of relates to an experience I had at the independent record label where I work.
In the last few years, at least in the punk & indie rock scenes, vinyl records and cassette tapes have been making a comeback for some reason. The label president and I had a booth at a record fair, and next to us was another booth with a couple of college kids from Syracuse University, real hipster-types, and probably a decade younger than either of us (and neither I nor the label head are particularly old).
The label head and I were having a conversation with the organizer of the record fair about the resurgence of cassettes, and all the while, one of the young college guys was edging closer and closer. Expressing my disdain for the resurgence of cheap, crappy tape media, I made a crack amounting to something like, "What next, are LaserDiscs going to be making a comeback now?" To which the college kid butted in, "I saw a LaserDisc once." Good for you, kid, good for you.
I actually have a laserdisc player, a Pioneer model. It's a model with still frame and serial control features. I bought it from an Ex-Commedore engineer who told me it was used in the development of AmigaVision. It came with the Amiga Vision software and the Black History Disc that was used for the demo.
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Expressing my disdain for the resurgence of cheap, crappy tape media, I made a crack amounting to something like, "What next, are LaserDiscs going to be making a comeback now?" To which the college kid butted in, "I saw a LaserDisc once." Good for you, kid, good for you.I actually have a laserdisc player, a Pioneer model. It's a model with still frame and serial control features. I bought it from an Ex-Commedore engineer who told me it was used in the development of AmigaVision. It came with the Amiga Vision software and the Black History Disc that was used for the demo.
You do still see them around occasionally. I found the kid's comment funny mostly because LaserDisc isn't even that old of a format-- Pioneer stopped making LaserDisc players in 2009, well into the Blu-Ray era, and you could still buy the things in US stores up until around the early '00s.
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If we took every elephant in the world and laid them end to end in space, all the elephants would die.
Unless some of them had spacesuits. Then only the ones without spacesuits would die.
Then again, everything dies eventually, so I guess both of our statements are true.
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If we took every elephant in the world and laid them end to end in space, all the elephants would die.
How do we know elephants can't breathe in a vacuum?
One would assume not, but to assume makes an ass out of u and me, colleagues.
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...
How do we know elephants can't breathe in a vacuum?
...
breathe
briːð/
verb
verb: breathe; 3rd person present: breathes; past tense: breathed; past participle: breathed; gerund or present participle: breathingtake air into the lungs and then expel it, especially as a regular physiological process.
***quotations demonstrating that air is a form of matter snipped for brevity***
vacuum
ˈvakjʊəm/
noun
noun: vacuum; plural noun: vacua; plural noun: vacuums1.
a space entirely devoid of matter.
By definition, breathing in a vacuum is impossible.
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If we took every elephant in the world and laid them end to end in space, all the elephants would die.How do we know elephants can't breathe in a vacuum?
One would assume not, but to assume makes an ass out of u and me, colleagues.
And when you make excuses, you make an, uh... X? Out of C and Q? I lost my train of thought.
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...
How do we know elephants can't breathe in a vacuum?
...breathe
briːð/
verb
verb: breathe; 3rd person present: breathes; past tense: breathed; past participle: breathed; gerund or present participle: breathingtake air into the lungs and then expel it, especially as a regular physiological process.
***quotations demonstrating that air is a form of matter snipped for brevity***
By definition, breathing in a vacuum is impossible.vacuum
ˈvakjʊəm/
noun
noun: vacuum; plural noun: vacua; plural noun: vacuums1.
a space entirely devoid of matter.
But not for an elephant.
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But not for an elephant....
How do we know elephants can't breathe in a vacuum?
...breathe
briːð/
verb
verb: breathe; 3rd person present: breathes; past tense: breathed; past participle: breathed; gerund or present participle: breathingtake air into the lungs and then expel it, especially as a regular physiological process.
***quotations demonstrating that air is a form of matter snipped for brevity***
By definition, breathing in a vacuum is impossible.vacuum
ˈvakjʊəm/
noun
noun: vacuum; plural noun: vacua; plural noun: vacuums1.
a space entirely devoid of matter.
???
I don't see anything there which would exempt elephants from the "it is impossible to breathe in a vacuum" tautology"
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But not for an elephant....
How do we know elephants can't breathe in a vacuum?
...breathe
briːð/
verb
verb: breathe; 3rd person present: breathes; past tense: breathed; past participle: breathed; gerund or present participle: breathingtake air into the lungs and then expel it, especially as a regular physiological process.
***quotations demonstrating that air is a form of matter snipped for brevity***
By definition, breathing in a vacuum is impossible.vacuum
ˈvakjʊəm/
noun
noun: vacuum; plural noun: vacua; plural noun: vacuums1.
a space entirely devoid of matter.???
I don't see anything there which would exempt elephants from the "it is impossible to breathe in a vacuum" tautology"
The elephant part.
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The first modern paper currency, the huizi was introduced in AD/CE 1161 by the Song dynasty of China. Regional governments and powerful merchants had experimented with paper money for several hundred years prior, but the huizi was the first nationwide, state-printed banknote. The huizi was denominated in terms of bronze coins, the main state currency of the Chinese kingdoms since the 300s BC/E; the lowest-value note was worth two hundred coins and the highest was worth three thousand.
Theoretically speaking, huizi could be redeemed for actual coins, but after the Chinese government discovered that paper bank notes would reduce the demand for coins (which were then exported to Japan, which used the same currency), the value of the huizi became decoupled from that of the coinage. Within a few decades, the bills could not be redeemed for bronze, becoming one of the world's first fiat currencies.
The first state-issued European banknotes would not appear for more than another five hundred years, first in Sweden (temporarily), then permanently in the United Kingdom and its American colonies.
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Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena S.p.A. (BMPS) is the oldest surviving bank in the world and the third largest commercial and retail bank in Italy by total assets. Founded in 1472 by the magistrate of the city state of Siena, Italy, as a "mount of piety," BPMS has been operating ever since. As of 2015, Banca MPS has approximately 2,100 branches in Italy, as well as branches and businesses abroad.
In 1995, a decree of the Ministry of the Treasury of the Italian Republic gave rise to two institutions: Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena S.p.A and Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena, a non-profit organization with the statutory purpose of providing assistance, charity and social utility in the fields of education, science, health and art, especially with reference to the city and the province of Siena. Four years later, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena was listed successfully on the Italian Stock Exchange.
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Fiat money - the bane of free market economics.
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A dolmen is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, most dating from the early Neolithic period, and usually consisting of two or more vertical megaliths supporting a large flat horizontal capstone, although there are also more complex variants. Dolmens were typically covered with earth or smaller stones to form a tumulus. In many instances, however, that covering has weathered away, leaving only the stone "skeleton" of the burial mound intact.
The word "dolmen" has a confused history. The word entered archaeology when Théophile Corret de la Tour d'Auvergne used it to describe megalithic tombs in his Origines gauloises (1796) using the spelling dolmin. The Oxford English Dictionary does not mention "dolmin" in English and gives its first citation for "dolmen" from a book on Brittany in 1859, describing the word as "The French term, used by some English authors, for a cromlech* ..."
The name was supposedly derived from a Breton language term meaning "stone table" but doubt has been cast on this, and the OED describes its origin as "Modern French." A book on Cornish antiquities from 1754 said that the current term in the Cornish language for a cromlech was tolmen ("hole of stone") and the OED says that "There is reason to think that this was the term inexactly reproduced by Latour d'Auvergne [sic] as "dolmen," and misapplied by him and succeeding French archaeologists to the cromlech". Nonetheless it has now replaced cromlech as the usual English term in archaeology, when the more technical and descriptive alternatives are not used.
*Cromlech (from Irish & Welsh crom (Irish) crym (Welsh) "bent, curved" and leac (Irish) llech (Welsh) "slab, flagstone") is another term used to describe prehistoric megalithic structures.
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A group of related species of fungus beetles of the genus Gelae were named upon discovery G. baen, G. belae, G. donut, G. fish, and G. rol.
On a similar tack, Strigiphilus garylarsoni is a species of chewing louse found only on owls, first described by biologist Dale H. Clayton in 1989, and named after Gary Larson, creator of the syndicated cartoon The Far Side. In his book The Prehistory of the Far Side, Larson stated, "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along."