The rest of that meme

Small things 27 Mar

• Has anyone tried unplugging 2020 for 10 seconds and plugging it back in?
• Ask not what staying home can do for you, ask what staying home can do for your country.
• Remember when you used to fill up some cars with gas by flipping down the license plate at the back? 
• Some people have cats and go on to lead normal lives. No really!
• Hey Starbucks, you want to impress me? Start making hot chocolate with real steamed milk and cocoa, not powder from a packet.  
• How do you know if someone's vegan? Don't worry, they tell you...
• Does the owner of Burger King live on Haviture Way?
• When faced with two choices, toss a coin in the air. Not because it settles the question, but because in that moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for. Choose that.
• People who grew up before the 80's know of a different use for the wooden spoon and the belt. They bring back painful memories.

When your joke backfires and you accidentally advance women's rights

Susanna Salter was elected mayor of Argonia Kansas on April 4, 1887. Her election was a surprise because her name had been placed on a slate of candidates as a prank by a group of men against women in politics hoping to secure a loss that would humiliate women and discourage them from running. Because candidates did not have to be made public before election day, Salter herself did not know she was on the ballot before the polls opened. When, on election day itself, she agreed to accept office if elected, the Women's Christian Temperance Union abandoned its own preferred candidate and voted for Salter en masse. Additionally, the local Republican Party Chairman sent a delegation to her home and confirmed that she would serve and the Republicans agreed to vote for her, helping to secure her election by a 2/3 majority.

Although her term was uneventful, her election generated national interest from the press, sparking a debate regarding the feasibility of other towns following Argonia's lead, which ranged from objections to "petticoat rule" to a "wait-and-see" attitude.

One of the first city council meetings over which the newly elected Mrs. Salter presided was attended by a correspondent of the New York Sun. He wrote his story, describing the mayor's dress and hat, and pointing out that she presided with great decorum. He noted that several times she checked irrelevant discussion, demonstrating that she was a good parliamentarian. Other publicity extended to newspapers as far away as Sweden and South Africa. As compensation for her year's service, she was paid one dollar. After only a year in office, she declined to seek reelection.

Awwww. Someone knitted a Covd-19....

A chaos engineer improvises his way back to Canada

While I was watching the world, and especially Europe erupt into chaos as a result of Covid-19, I couldn't help thinking about my friend Shawn Kinley, a veteran improviser at Loose Moose Theatre here in Calgary, who was chronicling his attempt to get back to Canada from an improv teaching tour.

So I got him on the phone and asked him to share his story with me, available on YouTube here.

Hope you're feeling better.....

Things I learned lately 27 Mar

• The Danish government struck a deal with unions and employers’ associations to stop mass layoffs during the Covid-19 quarantine. During the next 3 months, the state will cover 75% of the wages of all workers threatened by job loss, up to CAD$4,700. Companies will cover the remaining 25%, while workers will give up 5 days of paid holiday time. The deal covers companies who would have to lay off at least 30% of staff, or 50 staff or more. In return, companies commit to not lay off any staff for economic reasons while they’re receiving the compensation. 
• In 1800 Welsh was the main spoken language of the vast majority of the people in Wales.
• Oregon and New Jersey law requires that an attendant pump gas into your car. No self-serve allowed.
• Writers for That ’70s Show got creative with their titles as the show progressed; all the episode titles in season five were the titles of Led Zeppelin songs, in season six they were The Who songs, in season seven they were The Rolling Stones songs, and in season eight they were Queen songs.
• The male and female logos on public bathrooms are examples of Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education), a pictorial communication system conceived by Otto and Marie Neurath, and designed by Gerd Arntz, in the 1920s.
• You can still legally upgrade to Windows 10 for free, as long as your current Windows 7 or 8 install is licensed. 
• The North magnetic pole is moving at a rate of 60 km per year.
• Smishing (phishing via text) is becoming more common. Watch for "You won a contest" and "Package delivery tracking updates and delivery preferences" messages. Danger!
• GaN or Gallium Nitride chargers are coming. They're smaller, lighter, are more efficient, and charge faster.

Old movies

True facts - Mating dance of the ostrich

Ze Frank puts out some truly funny stuff, but I think he has outdone himself this time.

Warning: Bird porn ahead. Also, fowl language. LOL. Fowl language...... May not be suitable for young audiences.

Small things 20 Mar

• Dog thoughts: "The people who live with me are home all the time now! We go for sooo many walks. My dreams have come true!"
• Things Covid has proven: The job you were told couldn't be done from home.... can. (in many cases)
• Millenial cats fave saying: YOLN
• Let's stop arguing about how the world was created, and start dealing with those who are wrecking it.
• More ways to tease a nerd: "May the force be ever in your favour, Mr Potter." ~Gandalph (The Chronicles of Narnia)
• Imagine if in fast food commercials, they could only legally use pictures of what the food REALLY looks like?
• "I changed all my passwords to 'incorrect'. So my computer just tells me when I forget. ~Will Ferrell
• I finished high school without the benefit of Google or wikipedia.
• I caught the TV remote calling out to my car keys "Come hide in the sofa cushion with me!"
• Children must always wear a seat belt. Unless you put 50 of them in one school bus.
• Do you know why the internet is full of cats? Because dog people go outside.
• Why do dogs tilt their heads when they're confused?

Except you wouldn't have to wait 12 hours really

"In my hand is every melody that ever existed and ever can exist"

Here's an interesting explanation for why music copyright is broken and needs fixing.

It will be interesting to see if what Damien Riehl has done will protect future songwriters from accidental copyright infringement.

Patience level - 0

Things I learned lately 20 Mar

• You may know the famous Funk #49, but there was a Funk #48 too, on the previous James Gang (pictured) album.
• Funk #49 is 50 years old this year.
• Phil Collins played on a few of Brian Eno's albums in the 1970s.
• One horsepower is NOT equal to the peak power production of a horse. In fact, a horse is capable of 15 horsepower. A human's capability is 5 HP.
• Candy corn was originally called chicken feed.
• There are more barrels of bourbon in Kentucky than there are people.
• Area code assignment was influenced by the rotary phone. Big cities like New York and Los Angeles received numbers that required less effort to dial, while less populous cities like Anchorage received numbers that took longer to dial.
• Japan has the most 7-11 stores.
• The first female host of SNL (and first person to host the show more than once) was Candice Bergen.
• One of iconic actor Jack Nicholson’s early jobs was working as a gofer/intern in MGM’s cartoonist department where one of his primary responsibilities was answering fan mail sent by children addressed to famous cartoon duo Tom and Jerry.
• Before the advent of granulated sugar, sugar was sold to consumers in loaves.

"Papers?"

The gang at "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" keep scoring big with their cannabis humour.

5 second rule

Zombie apocalypse

This happened a while ago, but I just remembered it lately and it still makes me laugh.

I'm standing on the beach walkway watching a large group of folks doing yoga on the beach at sunset in Pacific Beach in San Diego. This random guy beside me looks at me and says, "Yep. They'll be the first to go in the zombie apocalypse."

Bags of bacon. Dunkin' Donuts.

First Tesla ride

Well, it finally happened. I got to ride in a Tesla. In this case, a Model 3, dual motor (all-wheel drive), long range.

They're a family just up the street from us that I met at the community centre. Here's their story.

She wanted a Tesla ever since she had read about Elon Musk. You could say she was a huge fan and follower. She knew she wanted a Tesla even though she had never owned a new car before. Leaha put her $1000 down on the car even before it officially launched, as Tesla had opened it up for reservations before the public launch event.

They’ve had it since end October 2018. They were originally given a car with a white interior, which they did not like, so they switched for a black interior.

On really cold days the car loses between 20 and 30 km of range overnight.

They’ve been using the “Plugshare“ app to find charging stations, including non-Tesla ones.

She did not get the auto-pilot option. She didn’t really have full trust in it and if she were ever to change her mind in the future, you can add the ability later, because the hardware is already there.

She was shocked at how inexpensive the insurance was for an $80,000 car (under $1000 for the year for full coverage). She made the insurance company recheck a few times to make sure that the premium was correct.  This may have a lot to do with all the safety features and the car’s crash safety test results.

Her husband has driven the car, and he likes it a lot. He didn’t really pay much attention to Leaha’s excitement and interest in the car before it was purchased, but he sure came around after he saw what it was all about. Although he would rather drive it than his car, Leaha made it clear that it’s her car.

Her biggest complaint about the car is how easy it is to get pea gravel into the brakes, which is quite irritating to listen to. The service centre easily removed the little rock(s) and even showed them how they could do that themselves.

Since I knew that it’s a thing among Tesla owners to name their cars, I asked if Leaha had named hers. She named it Shelley, after Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory.

So far the only defect has been a known rear window defrost wire issue that cracked the glass, which was fixed under warranty.

Leaha agreed to take me out for a drive in the car one night and at one point, I was offered the driver’s seat so I could drive it myself. I wasn’t sure that would happen considering that she didn’t even let any of her kids drive it yet.

First off, the silence of the car is very unusual. There’s just no sound at all, save for maybe some noise coming from the climate control fans.

Another big thing that takes getting used to is the absence of anything lit up directly in front of you in the cockpit. No ambient lights. No gauges behind the steering wheel. Everything is happening on the screen to the immediate right of the steering wheel.

The accelerator pedal hides a beast. This car has a lot of power and torque, which I did not get to experience completely with the owner sitting beside me. But you could tell by how much force was needed to drive normally that there was a lot of reserve power just waiting to be summoned. A person with very little foot control would have a bad time with this car. Or a good time, depending on how you look at it.

Their car was set up with standard regenerative braking, which immediately starts slowing the car down without using the brake pedal. It allows for what’s known in electric car circles as “one pedal driving”. It takes a little getting used to, because if you let go of the accelerator pedal at the same point you would have done it with a gas car, you’ll slow to a stop long before you probably wanted to. So basically, you keep your foot on the pedal as long as you want to keep going and you ease off to slow down and ease off more to stop.

Small things 13 Mar

• The CEO of Purell must be drooling with anticipation right now.
• Go into a Costco and just sneeze real loud. Now that's attention.
• Betty White is so old, she starred on a 7 season TV series about being old that went off the air before most of you were even born.
• I'm into fitness. Fitness whole donut into my mouth......
• Buy 4 identical cats. When people come over and ask how many cats you have, just say "One, but it's really fast."
• [beginsarcasm] Are tampons expensive to prevent women from hoarding them? [/endsarcasm]
• I think it's interesting that many people feel the need to support declining an invitation to something with a reason or excuse. Especially when the reason or excuse is made up. It's better to just not give a reason.
• Instead of putting ribbons on cars indicating that we support our troops, let's elect governments that support them and take care of veterans.
• If I make breakfast, the correct response is 'thank you', not 'how did you get in my house?'.
• Don't let things happen to you. Go out and happen to things.
• Dumb guy: My friend told me he met two Brazilian girls. I was too embarrassed to ask how many is a brazillion?
• One of the fun things about getting old is intentionally misusing slang words around young adults just to watch them squirm.

Yeah, that's not how it works...

Things I learned lately 13 Mar

• Contrary to what the eyeglass store might tell you, blue light from your computer does NOT cause cancer, cataracts, macular degeneration, or retinal damage. In fact, there is no data to support that it even causes eye strain or fatigue. The fatigue you do experience has to do with a lower blink rate, which dries your eyes out. The cure? 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes, take a 20 second break from the monitor and look 20 feet into the distance (or more).
• From March 1st 2020, Luxembourg will have free public transit throughout the country. You'll be able to travel on buses, trains, trams, and that one funicular railway without a ticket.
• Moths don't eat holes in fabric. Their larvae do.
• Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker is hawking a Silver Solution for $125 that supposedly cures the corona virus in 12 hours.
• The average salary for a GP (general practitioner doctor) in the US is USD$218,173. In France, it's USD$111,769. Unlike US doctors, who pay for their medical schooling, in France it's free.
• In Finland, the cupboard space above the kitchen sink, each shelf behind that one door is a drying rack. Any water dripping from the dishes falls into the sink and you don't have to look at your wet dishes all day.
• In Finland it isn't unusual for groups of homes to pool money together to buy and maintain common tools like lawnmowers and basic tools for the group to use. All kept in a communal storage building.
• Wind turbine blades can be severely damaged over time from hail, ice pellets, dust, anything at all in the air, which pummels the leading edge of the blades at speeds up to 350 km/h.
• They used a topless overweight guy to demonstrate on social media how to do a breast self examination because you can't show that on a woman's topless body on social media. 
• Thanks to Spanish explorers bringing the bird back from the Americas, by the end of the 16th century, turkey was widely eaten across England.
• Chromebooks have an end-of-life date built in when they stop getting updates.

Choose

Small things 6 Mar

• Hearing impaired people can pun too. Signing 'milk' while moving your hand past your eyes for example. (Pasteurized milk)
• I don't know who the lady shaver commercial people are trying to kid. Those models already had no hair on their legs. Demonstrate on a European woman who has never shaved.
• A priest, a minister, and a rabbit walk into a blood bank. The rabbit says, "I think I might be a type o."
• Toast is bread that was cooked twice. "Here's some bread." "Cook it again!"
• I've gone from sneaking out of the house to go play as a kid, to sneaking out of parties to go home as an adult.
• All mothers are body builders.
• Imagine what a candle shop would smell like if it burned down.
• Humans hate getting wet, unless they decide to.
• I find it amazing that any cake gets baked at all considering how good cake batter is. Ditto for cookie dough.
• It's going to be very interesting if Alberta succeeds in realizing a federal separatist party. Especially when they begin hearing the same responses lobbed at them that Albertans lobbed at The Bloc for the past few decades.
• Here's how a textbook on Thermodynamics opens: "Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics." Or, maybe not.....
• Someone one day decided that it would be a good idea to put cubes of really stale bread in a salad. "It needs to be crunchy..."

The first known case of music piracy

"Miserere mei, Deus," is a setting of Psalm 51, composed by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably around 1638, for the exclusive use of the Sistine Chapel during the Tenebrae services of Holy Week. Its mystique was increased by unwritten performance traditions.

At some point, it became forbidden to transcribe the music and it was allowed to be performed only at particular services at the Sistine Chapel, thus adding to the mystery surrounding it.

Three authorized copies of the work were distributed prior to 1770: to the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I; to the King of Portugal, John V; and to Padre (Giovanni Battista) Martini. None of them succeeded in capturing the beauty of the Miserere as performed annually in the Sistine Chapel.

According to the popular story, backed by family letters, 14 year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was visiting Rome when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. Later that day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Chapel that Friday to make minor corrections. Less than three months after hearing the song and transcribing it, Mozart had gained fame for the work and was summoned to Rome by Pope Clement XIV, who showered praise on him for his feat of musical genius and awarded him the Chivalric Order of the Golden Spur on July 4, 1770.

Some time during his travels, he met the British historian Charles Burney, who obtained the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. The work was also transcribed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1831 and Franz Liszt, and various other 18th and 19th century sources survive. Since the lifting of the ban, Allegri's Miserere has become one of the most popular a cappella choral works now performed.

If you watch this performance, you'll understand why it was such a coveted piece of music.

Jubilee stomp

Tuba Skinny.

What a lively sound they make.

Recorded in 2018, in New Orleans of course.

Would they take it?

Things I learned lately 6 Mar

• The law in Alberta says that an advertised car price at a dealership is all-in, meaning all fees included except for finance charges and GST.
• Dracula parrots are a thing. Do a Google image search. Gothic.....
• Scotland will be making all women's hygiene products available for free.
• The lack of sick days available to US workers will be a factor in allowing the corona virus to spread faster.
• Vin Mariani tonic was introduced in 1863 and was advertised both as wine, and as a general cure-all product promising to treat whatever ailment you may have. The tonic became a sensation and was widely endorsed, used among many famous people of the time, including the Pope and Thomas Edison. The tonic even inspired the invention of Coca Cola. The reason behind Vin Mariani's success? The drink contained around 6 mg of cocaine per fluid ounce of wine.
• The string on cartons of animal cracker treats was put on the box in 1902 so that the boxes, smaller than the large tins the crackers were usually sold in, could be hung on Christmas trees; the packaging was a hit and the smaller box, string and all, is still produced today.
• In ancient Mesopotamia, the new year was celebrated on March 20th, the Spring Equinox.
• 95 percent of cranberries are processed immediately after harvest into juice and cranberry sauce. The remaining 5 percent are sold fresh or dried and sweetened.
• Stonehenge has had a bit of help. Since 1901, people have been putting blocks back that fall out of place.
• British military tanks are required to have a boiling vessel station for brewing tea or other hot drinks (and heating boil-in-the-bag meals) on board.