Stupid Is as Stupid Does

Here is one defining example of what dumbing-down education for 4 decades has wrought.

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search code DDMMYYYY format:        18032026

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Tariff Smarts?

I found this posted on LinkedIn,  where it was drawing quite a bit of readership.  It’s funny enough that I want to re-post it here.  Seems to be rather accurate,  really,  although the apes might be insulted by the comparison. 

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Search code 24082025

Search keywords:  fun stuff,  bad government,  idiocy in politics

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Starbuck’s Logo?

My wife found this on her Facebook.  It’s too good not to share.  Needs no comment.

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Rear of a Whale?

My wife found this on Facebook,  and it is too funny not to share.  Offered without further comment.

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Search code 10082025,  search keywords:  fun stuff,  bad gov’t,  idiocy in politics

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How Tariffs Really Work?

My wife found a version of this on Facebook and told me about it.  I went searching on the internet,  and found this jpg file version,  which I could actually use.  It was so funny I cannot resist posting it! 

Note the Canadian maple leaf on the fan.  Considering all the crud Trump and his minions have done regarding Canada,  I am not surprised someone drew this cartoon.  Pretty soon that maple leaf could be any of the symbols for every country in the world!

But with a looming recession and high inflation,  it is definitely gallows humor!  Trump has done this in less than 90 days:  taking a decent economy and crashing it.  If you don’t believe that,  then explain to me why the values of your 401(k)’s have crashed!

Trump Denial Syndrome

I found this image on LinkedIn,  and thought it was too funny (and too true!!!) not to repost here.  I have seen people labeled as having "Trump Derangement Syndrome",  and I been the target of that myself.  Sometimes this was shortened to the acronym TDS.

But the real TDS is as listed in the illustration.  It is acquired by getting all your "information and news" from social media,  internet gathering-place websites,  and outfits like Fox News (infamous as right wing liars for some decades now).  

People come to believe lies that they hear constantly,  that has been known for centuries,  and underlies all propaganda operations.  

Drugged Spiders?

My wife found this somewhere on Facebook.  It was too funny not to repost here. 

While intellectually I know it is likely that different species will respond to drugs in different ways,  it was still startling to see caffeine apparently disrupt web-spinning,  while speed and marijuana apparently do not! 

If this is real research being done somewhere,  it is a contender for the Ig Nobel!

Texas Heat

 This one is presented as a funny,  without comment.  Enjoy.

Tornado Precautions?

My wife found this on her Facebook.  We both thought it was hilarious,  primarily because it is close to the truth. 

Many years ago,  before we went to Minnesota for my first formal teaching job,  we did just about what is pictured for Texans.  Except,  we were sitting in lawn chairs,  eating and drinking,  just watching the show.  That show was multiple little F1’s spun up out of nothing,  about a thousand feet away or so,  out here on the farm.  They got bigger as they moved downwind.   

The nearest town is 4 miles away line-of-sight,  but there were no tornadoes over there,  so there were no sirens to ignore.

Where Some Things Came From

Interesting phrases,  and the debunking of an internet myth with the even stranger truth.  This is not an April Fool’s joke!

Where did the standard railroad gauge (spacing between rail heads) come from?

As for standard railroad track gauge,  you have to understand where that came from.  4 ft 8.5 inches = 1.435 m between rail heads is not a nice round number in anybody's measuring-units system.  

The first rail carriages were made in Europe from road wagons,  the wheels of which fitted the worn ruts in the roads,  with that road rut spacing.  The roads were rutted to the same width all over Europe.  One has to wonder why?  

That rut spacing matched exactly the rut spacing in the old Roman roads made of stone.  Ruts worn there by the passage of Roman iron-rimmed chariot wheels.  And the Romans ruled most of Europe for a long time.  That's why. 

Roman chariot wheels were spaced just far enough apart that the two horses that drew them,  would not trip and stumble in those ruts.  That rut spacing was quite literally set by (the width of) two horse's asses!

Which just goes to show that the evil/stupidity that men do lives long after them.

Where did the saying “son of a gun” come from?

This is about 3 or 4 centuries old,  coming from the voyages of colonization from Europe to the “new World” and Australia.  In those days,  ships were much slower,  and even crossing the Atlantic took multiple months.

Conditions aboard these ships were rather squalid,  and with not much to do,  many of the women turned up pregnant.  Under such conditions,  many of them would not say who the father was. 

Medicine being what it was during those centuries (about 1 step removed from being witch doctors),  about 10% or more of these women would die in childbirth,  and a lot more than that would be having very serious troubles giving birth. 

As a last resort,  the ship’s doctor would have the woman dragged up to the gun deck and placed between two of the ship’s guns.  They would fire one,  in an effort to scare the baby out of her.

If it worked,  the baby was known as a son of a gun.

Where did the saying “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” come from?

Despite the image this conjures up,  the saying has nothing to do with monkeys or genitalia.  It comes from the days of wind driven ships and smooth-bore cannons,  around 2-3 centuries ago.    In those days,  iron was expensive and brass was cheap,  unlike today. 

Cannon balls had to be made of expensive iron,  but being spheres,  rolled all over pitching decks.  They had to be restrained from that.  The solution was a triangular frame resembling the rack that positions billiard balls today,  into which the cannon balls could be stacked in a stable 3-sided pyramidal shape. 

Naval terminology being unlike language anywhere else on Earth,  this rack was called a “monkey”,  and it was made of inexpensive brass.  That’s where the term “brass monkey” derives.  But there’s more …

About 2 centuries ago,  when these old sailing ships ventured into the Arctic and the Antarctic,  they encountered colder temperatures than anybody in the home countries had ever experienced before.  Brass has a larger coefficient of thermal expansion than cast iron,  so the “monkey” (rack) shrank in the cold faster than the cannon balls did.

Cold enough,  and the shrinking rack would squeeze the stack of cannon balls too hard,  causing some of them to suddenly pop loose from the stack,  and go rolling around on the deck.  Such cold weather was deemed literally “cold enough to freeze the balls off the brass monkey”.

Where did the phrase “the whole nine yards” come from?

During World War 1,  the British Royal Flying Corps installed a type of belt-fed machine gun on some of its biplane fighter planes.  This particular gun design used an ammunition belt that was 27 feet (9 yards) long.  Returning pilots who had used up all their ammunition had literally shot “the whole nine yards”.

Which rocket was really designed by the size of a railway tunnel?

Contrary to claims often made on the internet and social media,  the rocket designed by the size of railway tunnels was not the Space Shuttle solid boosters,  it was Werner Von Braun’s V-2 missile in Germany during World War 2.

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) has a specification for the dimensions of rail cars that will fit through any bridges,  tunnels ,  and around mountainside curves,  meant for standard gauge track.  The details of this are given in AAR Plate B “equipment clearance diagram” in detail,  but suffice it to say here that the max overall width is 10 feet 8 inches,  and the max height above the rail heads is 15 feet 1 inch.

The Space Shuttle booster rocket segments were 120 inch (10 feet) outside diameter.  They would fit as segments just fine,  shipped on a railroad flat car,  through any tunnels,  bridges,  or mountainous curves,  anywhere in the US.  That was not the rocket “sized to fit railway tunnels”!  It was sized by other design considerations,  including then-available propellant mix and cast capabilities,  at what was once Thiokol in Salt Lake City,  Utah.

The V-2 was manufactured at a facility known as the “Mittlewerk”,  using concentration camp slave labor,  in the mountains of Bavaria in southern Germany,  during World War 2.  In Germany at that time,  although the same gauge track as in the US,  railway tunnel clearances were tighter than AAR Plate B,  and the entire weapon had to fit upon a standard German flat car of that time (as well as a roadable trailer),  and go through railway tunnels in the Bavarian mountains. 

That fit through a tunnel on a railroad flat car is why the V-2 was limited to 45 feet 11 inches long,  and had the odd-shaped,  short-span,  long-chord fins that it had.  It rode in the X-configuration on those flat cars.  Body diameter was 5 feet 5 inch,  and the wingspan of the fins tip-to-tip was 11 feet 8 inches.  In the X-configuration,  those fins fit within a square box 8 feet 3 inches on a side.

Source:  Wikipedia,  “V-2 Rocket”,  as of 3-31-2024

Christmas Funnies 2023

This is just for fun.  My wife found a funny on the internet that I simply must repost here.  The lights as hung in this city display are just too funny,  given the appropriate modified Christmas song to go with them. 

As many readers know,  I put up a yard display each year that we call “White Trash Christmas”.  It involves some plastic yard flamingoes lit up from inside,  as Santa’s reindeer,  a lit-up plastic Santa,  and something I call the “Iron Christmas Tree”.  There are two views of this posted below,  taken just after sun-down,  Saturday 12-16-2023.  I put a trash bag of recycled cans in the wagon to represent Santa’s magic bag.

There are 10 flamingoes.  Eight are arranged in pairs,  marked and ordered as the eight names from the Christmas tales.  Those would be “Dasher”,  Dancer”,  Prancer”,  and ”Vixen”,  followed by “Comet”, “Cupid”,  “Donner”,  and “Blitzen”.  The lone one out front is labeled “Rudolph”.  The lone one behind is labeled “Bambi”.  Yeah,  I cheated.  But I had 10 yard flamingoes. 

The Iron Tree is something I made many years ago.  It has a PVC pipe center core,  and angled “legs” made of rebar.  The lights get hoisted up and then “may-poled” around,  to cover it. 

The view from more-or-less the side shows this thing set up near my farm shop.  The view from behind shows our house across the driveway from the farm shop. 

By the way,  each flamingo has pipe cleaner “antlers” on his head. 

Update 12-18-2023:  We also put up this year's version of the missile toad. 

And just to let you know that not everything around here is abnormal,  our tree is up,  too.

 

Scariest Halloween Costume

 

Two Funnies

Here are two funnies that my wife found on Facebook,  presented essentially without comment.  Enjoy!  (Youngsters might need to be reminded that the old man in the second picture is Dick Van Dyke,  who is 97 years old now.)

Two More Fermi Paradox Answers

 Here's a couple more reasons why the aliens do not stop to talk to us.  Answers to the Fermi paradox,  they are.  

Note in the first one that it is "chicken-flavored" but labeled as "ham",  when it is in fact made of vegetable material.  The second one is self-explanatory. 

Alternate Solution to Fermi Paradox?

Here is an alternate solution to the Fermi paradox,  different from the one I posted here 7-16-23.  

For those who don't know,  the paradox asks why,  if there are so many inhabitable planets,  do the aliens not make contact with us?

Solution to Fermi Paradox?

For those who don’t know,  the Fermi Paradox asks why,  if there are so many possible inhabitable planets in the galaxy,  have we not been contacted? 

Here is one possible answer: 

Startling Images

This showed up in my wife's Facebook.  I could not resist.  The image of the hog is startling enough by itself.  But when you add the image of Miss Piggy to it,  that puts it right over top!  Enjoy.  

Critter Funny

 

My wife ran across this on her Facebook.  I thought it was too funny not to post here. 

It’s All In the Punctuation!

Misplacing your punctuation sometimes changes the meaning entirely.  This effect is illustrated in the figure,  where both of the girls are pointing up at the sky,  the essence of astronomy without telescopes.  The words are exactly the same,  only the hyphen moves!  These cases are “naked-eye astronomy”,  and “naked eye-astronomy”.  However,  one of these cases promises to be rather more fun than the other.  I’ll give you one guess as to which. 

White Trash Christmas 2022

This is the 2022 version of a yard decoration we have put up most of (but not all) the years since about 1998 or thereabouts.  It’s intended to be funny,  and we call it “White Trash Christmas”.  We got the “missile toad” up first,  now this,  and soon the living room Christmas tree.  

For the “missile toad”,  see the article dated 7 December 2021 and titled “Christmas Decoration” on this site. 

The tree is an “iron tree” I designed many years ago.  It would be appropriate outdoors,  no matter the circumstances.  It sets up rather quickly,  and you just wind the light string onto it,  Maypole style. 

The “Santa and his sleigh rig” I made this year out of a lawn tractor wagon as the sleigh,  a plastic Santa with an internal light bulb that I have had for many years,  and a trash bag as the bag of toys. 

The reindeer team is a set of plastic lawn flamingoes rigged with internal lights,  and pipe cleaners glued to their heads as antlers.  There are the classic team of eight,  with “Rudolph” out front,  and “Bambi” bringing up the rear.  All of these are labeled with the appropriate names.

Those who know me,  know that I do have a twisted sense of humor (and so does my wife Ellen).  At any rate,  enjoy!   The view is from the shop yard back toward our house. 

Update 1-2-2023:  As of today,  I took the display down for the season.  Partly in response to possible severe weather,  but mostly because it is past New Year's now.  I plan to put it up again next Christmas season,  in one or another form.