The Smarmy Carny

Find x

This week's picture comes from EatLiver.com, though I originally noticed it in someone's MySpace comments.

This joke falls into the "I wish I had thought of that" category.

Of course, one has to wonder why geometry texts frequently use the phrase "Find x" when they really want to say "Find out what x is equal to." I suppose it's for brevity.

Gloria's Nuts (Pun intended)

Melody Berger reported her (intentional) encounter with Gloria Steinem in an article in The F-Word Ezine. In it, she not only fawns over Steinem the entire time, but even after the interview, she admits that "The two hours we spent chatting over coffee comprised, quite easily, one of the most amazing highlights of my entire life. Basking in the aura of "Glo" was such an intensely inspirational experience." Yikes.

Here's one particularly confusing section of the interview:

Melody: When I saw the picture, the famous picture of him, with a bunch of other white guys, gleefully signing away our rights as women [with the Partial Birth Abortion Ban]… all I could think was, "ok, how is that not just pure evil?"
Gloria: Well, you know, there is certainly evil effect. There are certainly going to be millions of women and a lot of men who simply are not alive because he's in the White House. There are going to be whole species of animals, and living things, and plants that are not alive anymore, and will never come back, because: he killed them. So, that's an evil impact. I don't think it's inevitable. He wasn't born that way.

So, class, what have we learned today? There will be "millions of women and a lot of men who simply are not alive" because we can no longer kill as many of them before they are born? In order to avoid conflicting lessons, we will not be teaching Statistics, Formal Logic, or Ethics today.

Lincoln-Kennedy Penny

Recently, I posted about the assassinations foretold in Moby Dick. That reminded me of the popular Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences. I did a few searches and compiled some of the more interesting items.:

• Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.
• Both were elected to the House of Representatives in '46.
• Both failed to win the vice presidential nomination in '56.
• Lincoln defeated Stephen Douglas, born in 1813; Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon born in 1913.
• Both presidents lost children while in the White House.
• Both were shot from behind and in the head.
• Both were slain on a Friday, in the presence of their wives.
• Lincoln was killed in Ford's Theater, Kennedy was killed in a Ford automobile; a Lincoln.
• The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
• President Lincoln's secretary, whose name was Kennedy, advised him not to go to the theater. Kennedy's secretary, whose name was Lincoln, advised him not to make the trip to Dallas.
• They were both succeeded by Southern Democrats named Johnson, who held seats in the U.S. Senate.
• Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson were both born in '08.
• Both Johnsons were opposed for reelection by men whose names start with "G."
• The names Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson each contain 13 letters, as do the names of their wives, Eliza McCardle and Claudia Taylor.
• John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald were both born in '39.
• Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and was captured in a barn, a warehouse. Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy from a warehouse, the depository, and was arrested at a theater.
• Both assassins were killed before they could be brought to trial.
• The names John Wilkes booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both total 15 letters.

To quote a Dan Bern song, "Whoever gets elected in 2060 had better beware, had better think about this weird little thing."

With all the mumbo jumbo with hidden codes and such, from the television show Numbers to The Da Vinci Code, I thought I would post
Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick.

This has been in my favorites for years, and I enjoy coming back to it every so often. If you surf around on his webspace, you'll find some other such items from other works as well.

If Moby Dick doesn't interest you, you can also read about why Barney is evil.