Archive of entries posted on 23rd May 2020
Saturday Night Hootenanny
IMAO Time Machine: Fun Facts About the 50 States: Florida
This is a reposting of one of Harvey’s classics. There’s a link to the book in the sidebar. — The Editors
Welcome to Fun Facts About the 50 States, where – week by week – I’ll be taking you on a tour around this great nation of ours, providing you with interesting, yet completely useless and probably untrue, information about each of the 50 states.
This week, we’ll be thinking to ourselves that there’s GOT to be a better way to earn tuition money just before passing out from heat stroke while wearing an unventilated Disney character costume as we visit sunny Florida, so let’s get started…
- Florida became the 27th state on March 3rd, 1845, an event which most of the state’s residents recall fondly from their childhoods.
- Or WOULD, if it weren’t for the Alzheimer’s.
- The knee is Florida’s official state arthritic joint.
- The largest private employer in Florida is Disney World. The second largest is the company that makes “this ride closed for repairs” signs.
- After the Presidential election disaster in 2000, Florida passed a law making it illegal to vote without first removing your souvenir Mickey Mouse gloves.
- The most common cause of death in Florida is being run over by old women who mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan.
- The second most common is getting run over by ’57 Chevys that wash up on Miami Beach from Cuba.
- The state bird of Florida is the Pink Flamingo, a feisty animal which is actually capable of killing a fully grown alligator, thanks to Florida’s concealed carry law.
- Although most Floridians don’t speak with a strong southern accent, they DO tend to pronounce the word “hurricane” as “Oh, SH**!”
- Janet Reno was born in Miami, Florida, and only returned to the state because her magic mirror told her that Elian Gonzales was fairer than she.
- Twice yearly, Florida is victimized by uncontrollable destructive forces which lay waste to the state. These times are known as “hurricane season” and “spring break.”
- The state reptile of Florida is the alligator, which subsists on a diet of fish, birds, and Japanese tourists.
- The state song of Florida is “Grandpa, Don’t Wear That Speedo to the Beach.”
- If a hurricane strikes while you’re in Florida, just hand over your wallet and no one will get hurt.
- Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon discovered Florida in 1513 while searching for the legendary Fountain of Orange Juice.
- Despite the fact that the temperature never gets below freezing, Florida has a professional ice hockey team, which… nah, no one’s gonna believe that one.
- People from Florida are easy to spot on the road. They’re the ones driving around with sheets of plywood nailed over their car windows.
- If you move to Florida, buy a house with a colorful roof so that you can easily find it after it gets blown down the street by a hurricane.
- When visiting Sea World in Orlando, be sure to stop by the restaurant for the “slow learner sandwich” special.
- Native Floridians never wear sunglasses because they have a special, inner third eyelid to keep out the sun’s harmful rays.
- Florida’s Disney World is technically in a state of war with California’s Disneyland, and the two theme parks exchange nuclear strikes several times a year.
- The University of Florida’s football team is named the Gators in honor of the millions of alligators milked each year to make Gatorade.
- Neil Smith of Montverde, Florida, invented the riding lawn mower in 1933, adding to the list of useful things that Floridians watch get blown down the street by a hurricane.
- The state tree of Florida is the Palm Tree – so named because that’s the part of your body that will be scraped raw if you try to climb it.
- While in Florida, NEVER try to climb any sort of nut tree.
- The Everglades in Florida is 2100 square miles of smelly, oozing, mosquito-infested muck. Most Florida natives still refer to it by its original name the “The Cesspool National Park.”
- Passing the test for a driver’s license in Florida requires that you be able to make a right turn from the left lane across 3 lanes of traffic. Or so I assume from what I saw last time I was there.
- Despite rumors to the contrary, “Florida oysters” is NOT a euphemism for boiled alligator testicles.
- However, eating Florida oysters WILL cause you to grow a special, inner third eyelid.
- The state flower of Florida is the Orange Blossom, which is a small, white flower with an insatiable hunger for human flesh.
- The refrigerator was invented in Florida in 1921. This represented a great technological leap forward, as now Floridians had a place to store their melted ice cream when the power went out.
That wraps up the Florida edition of Fun Facts About the 50 States. Next week we’ll be sneaking north across the border into America’s peachiest state, Georgia.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go milk me some fresh Gatorade.
[The complete e-book version of “Fun Facts About the 50 States” is now available at Amazon.com. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download free Kindle apps for your web browser, smartphone, computer, or tablet from Amazon.com]
Winnowing!
WTF for People Who Revere the Ashmolean Museum
Ashmole …
Heh
… met the botanist and collector John Tradescant the Younger around 1650.
Tradescant had, with his father, built up a vast and renowned collection of exotic plants, mineral specimens and other curiosities from around the world at their house in Lambeth.
Ashmole helped Tradescant catalogue his collection in 1652, and, in 1656, he financed the publication of the catalogue, the Musaeum Tradescantianum.
In 1659, Tradescant, who had lost his only son seven years earlier, legally deeded his collection to Ashmole.
Under the agreement, Ashmole would take possession at Tradescant’s death.
When Tradescant died in 1662, his widow, Hester, contested the deed, claiming her husband had signed it when drunk without knowing its contents, but the matter was settled in Chancery in Ashmole’s favour two years later.
Hester was to hold the collection in trust for Ashmole until her death.
Ashmole’s determined aggressiveness in obtaining the Tradescant collection for himself has led some scholars to consider that Ashmole was an ambitious, ingratiating social climber who stole a hero’s legacy for his own glorification.
In 1677, Ashmole made a gift of the Tradescant Collection, together with material he had collected independently, to the University on the condition that a suitable home be built to house the materials and make them available to the public.
Ashmole had already moved into the house adjacent to the Tradescants’ property in 1674 and had already removed some items from their house into his.
In 1678, in the midst of further legal wrangling over the Tradescant Collection, Hester was found drowned in a garden pond.
By early 1679, Ashmole had taken over the lease of the Tradescant property and began merging his and their collections into one.
The Ashmolean Museum was completed in 1683, and is considered by some to be the first truly public museum in Europe.
The collection filled twelve wagons when it was transferred to Oxford. It would have been more, but a large part of Ashmole’s own collection, destined for the museum, including antiquities, books, manuscripts, prints, and 9,000 coins and medals, was destroyed in a disastrous fire in the Middle Temple on 26 January 1679.
— per vcoins.com
Dude! Chill!
It’s a Funny World
Is FrankJ Using Mars for Target Practice?
A Very Special Memorial Day Weekend Post
And It’s as if Burke Knew Hollywood, As Well
— From Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790):
[The paragraph breaks are inserted for easier reading.]
Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rousseau himself the secret of his principles of composition. That acute, though eccentric observer, had perceived, that, to strike and interest the public, the marvellous must be produced;
that the marvellous of the heathen mythology had long since lost its effects;
that giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance, which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which belonged to their age;
that now nothing was left to a writer but that species of the marvellous which might still be produced, and with as great an effect as ever, though in another way—that is, the marvellous in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals.
I believe, that, were Rousseau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the practical frenzy of his scholars…
They Said To Be Specific
It’s as if Burke Knew Our Modern Press
— From Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790):
… how little you seem to know of us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneously, if they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally prevalent [in our country]. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue of several petty cabals
[Could have said “cables”]
who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing and mutual quotation of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of their abilities is a general mark of acquiescence in their opinions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the … oak chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field,—that, of course, they are many in number,—or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
A long tweet, but there was no character limit back then. And he had tons of it!
Straight Line of the Day: Scientists Can Control Monkeys’ Decisions With Bursts of Ultrasonic Waves. That Means…
Straight Line of the Day: Scientists can control monkeys’ decisions with bursts of ultrasonic waves. That means…
Researchers Control Monkeys’ Decisions With Bursts of Ultrasonic Waves
Gizmodo | 05/20/2020 | George DvorskySpecifically, the ultrasound treatments were shown to influence their decision to look either left or right at a target presented on a screen, despite prior training to prefer one target over the other.
The new study, co-authored by neuroscientist Jan Kubanek from the University of Utah,
(Wait: her co-author doesn’t rate even a nod?)
highlights the potential use of this non-invasive technique for treating certain disorders in humans, like addictions, without the need for surgery or medication. The procedure is also completely painless.
I, for one, am glad they don’t have anything more important to work on.
I’ll Pass These To Walrus. I’m Not Keen of Getting Familiarity.
It’s awesome to pay a quick visit this web page and reading the views of all friends about this piece of
writing, while I am also keen of getting familiarity.
the “Law connected with Reciprocity” kicks in. Good blog post
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The law connected with reciprocity kicks in here.
