Spotlight personality

Not only was Carl Michael Bellman a great composer of drinking songs, he had a whole genre of jokes named after him. One from my youth, before I knew it was a Bellman joke:

An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a German all died in the war and were sent to hell. The devil greeted them and said that he admired them for their bravery and wished to give each of them a chance to escape damnation. If any one of them could set him a task he could not perform, that one would be sent up to heaven.

The Englishman made the first attempt: one of His Majesty's greatest warships was sunk at Scapa Flow....can you restore it to its former glory? A hundred demons were set to the task, and it took them only 5 minutes to raise and repair the ship.

The Frenchman tried next: in the bombing of our cities, ten of our finest artworks were destroyed - can you bring them back and enrich our culture? A thousand efreets were dispatched, and the art was resurrected in 15 minutes.

As the Englishman and the Frenchman toddled off to eternal damnation, still pleased they had done something for their fatherlands, the German made his request: I'm going to fart now - can you paint it green?

Satan was baffled and the German was saved.

The Flynn effect....

This not only has some interesting information about IQ, and how it seems to keep getting better (The Flynn Effect) - how do the curmudgeons who think the world keeps dumbing down deal with that? - it has one of the funniest corrections ever.

Of course.....

some of my friends are already doing this.

Word of the week

Hypergamy

A good quote goes with this one, too:

Consult, for example, Ring Lardner’s humorous story “I Can’t Breathe”—the private journal of an eighteen year old girl who wants to marry a different young man every week. If surveyed on her preferred number of “sex partners,” she would presumably respond one; this does not mean she has any idea who it is.

F.Roger Devlin

Ain't technology wonderful....

The headline pretty much says is all:

Pea shooter traditionalists decry use of laser sights at annual competition

A record NOT to break....

OK, Guinness Book of World Record made a completely understandable faux pas... and then compounded it by doing what seemed like trying to sweep it under the rug with bullying.

To be honest, I wouldn't be very surprised if it was just an ordinary trademark defense without consideration of content, but it still looks embarrassing.

For those of you who don't click through, they had a "break this record" link - understandable in most categories, but not a good idea in most deaths caused by an act of terrorism.

HT Overlawyered

Quote of the day

Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing down a road that has led him to great sucess." - F.A. Hayek

Synecdoche update....

A while ago, that was our featured word.

Interesting take from Overheard:

Professor: An example of synecdoche would be, "get your ass over here." You want all of them, not just their ass. But sometimes, you do just want their ass. And we all know how that goes. But that sort of thing doesn't happen in a classroom... usually.

Quote of the Day

"It's not that everything he says is wrong, but the bits that are true aren't interesting, and the bits that are interesting aren't true. "

- Megan McArdle

For the man who wants everything - at once?

We have a review of the splayd here. The idea is familiar from that of the "spork" - a combination spoon/fork with a bit of knife thrown in as well.

HT to Megan, who got me there indirectly via the Venn diagram of combination cutlery.

Quote of the day

As I wrote at the time, the Times confused what people were emailing each other with what they would be willing to pay for. If those things were the same, poems about Jesus and pictures of kittens wearing hats would have replaced gambling and porn as the internet's most profitable content.
- Megan McArdle

Texting for somebody else's supper....

Marginal Revolution points us to this article that describes how you can donate to charities by texting.

Meet the new boss, same as the old was....

Obama moves to reaffirm one of Bush's most blatant attacks on our civil rights.

If he thinks you need to be locked up, who even needs a court. The fact that it won't be in Cuba won't make it any better.

HT Coyote, who also links to an explanation of the missing frog legs.

Most informative retrospective on Michael Jackson....

This one at Language Log actually explains Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa.

That practically BEGS an explanation of "chamone"!

How it works

Another good post from Coyote....

It really shows how politics and individual freedom are generally at odds. I suppose it is only natural, since politics is about controlling people and individual freedom...not. Nevertheless, the less you trust government, the more power you grant it, at least according to the guys cited here. Every day, the bucket goes to the well, but one day the bottom will drop out. Or so Bob Marley said.

"A spew, a poo, and a didgeridoo"

Has to be read.

Quote of the day

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

- Voltaire, rationalist & satirist (1694 - 1778)

From Samizdata

Quote of the day

"Microeconomics concerns things that economists are specifically wrong about, while macroeconomics concerns things that they are wrong about generally." -P.J. O'Rourke

Wonder dog from hell....

Apparently, the dog in this Balko post got several people imprisoned for over a decade because juries are gullible. A scary thought.

Beer and Mother Teresa's sex life....

A lot of people would find the relationship tenuous at best....but this item shows how "I am not fucking Mother Teresa" can be interpreted the wrong way.