Great post from friend, good egg and bastion of SVT – Ladies and Gentlemen – I bring you Mr John Caswell :
Zager & Evans – The Eve of Eruption. – Just Thinking!
And remember – the fact that no one understands you doesn’t mean you’re an artist.
Passed on – with thanks to : John Caswell
… sorry – can’t recal where i lifted this from – if I find ot – get reminded – I will update
Q: Why are many coin banks shaped like pigs?
A: Long ago, dishes and cookware in Europe were made of a
dense orange clay called “pygg”. When people saved coins in
jars made of this clay, the jars became known as “pygg banks.”
When an English potter misunderstood the word, he made a
bank that resembled a pig. And it caught on.
Q: Did you ever wonder why dimes, quarters and half dollars
have notches, while pennies and nickels do not?
A: The US Mint began putting notches on the edges of coins containing
gold and silver to discourage holders from shaving off small quantities
of the precious metals Dimes, quarters and half dollars are notched
because they used to contain silver. Pennies and nickels aren’t notched
because the metals they contain are not valuable enough to shave.
Q: Why do men’s clothes have buttons on the right while
women’s clothes have buttons on the left?
A: When buttons were invented, they were very expensive and worn
primarily by the rich. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids,
dressmakers put the buttons on the maid’s right. Since most people
are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes
on the left. And that’s where women’s buttons have remained since.
Q: Why do X’s at the end of a letter signify kisses?
A: In the Middle Ages, when many people were unable to read or write,
documents were often signed using an X. Kissing the X represented an
oath to fulfill obligations specified in the document. The X and the
kiss eventually became synonymous
Q: Why is shifting responsibility to someone else called “passing the buck”?
A: In card games, it was once customary to pass an item, called a
buck, from player to player to indicate whose turn it was to deal.
If a player did not wish to assume the responsibility,
he would “pass the buck” to the next player.
Q: Why do people clink their glasses before drinking a toast?
A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering
him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it
became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into
the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously. When a
guest trusted his host, he would then just touch or clink the host’s
glass with his own.
Q: Why are people in the public eye said to be “in the limelight”?
A: Invented in 1825, limelight was used in lighthouses and stage
lighting by burning a cylinder of lime which produced a brilliant
light. In the theatre, performers on stage “in the limelight” were seen
by the audience to be the center of attention.
Q: Why do ships and aircraft in trouble use “mayday” as their call for help?
A: This comes from the French word m’aidez -meaning “help me”
—- and is pronounced “mayday,”
Q: Why is someone who is feeling great “on cloud nine”?
A: Types of clouds are numbered according to the altitudes they attain,
with nine being the highest cloud If someone is said to be on cloud
nine, that person is floating well above worldly cares.
Q: Why are zero scores in tennis called “love! “?
A: In France, where tennis first became popular, a big, round zero on
scoreboard looked like an egg and was called “l’oeuf,”
which is French for “egg.”
When tennis was introduced in the US, Americans pronounced it “love.”
Q: In golf, where did the term “Caddie” come from?
A. When Mary, later Queen of Scots, went to France as a young girl (for
education & survival), Louis, King of France, learned that she loved
the Scot game “golf.” So he had the first golf course outside of
Scotland built for her enjoyment. To make sure she was properly
chaperoned (and guarded) while she played, Louis hired cadets from a
military school to accompany her. Mary liked this a lot and when she
returned to Scotland (not a very good idea in the long run), she took
the practice with her. In French, the word cadet is pronounced ‘ca-day’
and the Scots changed it into “caddie.”
This list just in from my mail … not all personally validated – some I already ‘knew’ – god help my brain – but makes for a vaguely interesting read …. Enjoy.
‘Stewardesses’ is the longest word typed with only the left hand. ‘Lollipop’ is the longest word typed with your right hand. No word in the English language rhymes with month , orange, silver, or purple. ‘Dreamt’ is the only English word that ends in the letters ‘mt’. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. The sentence: ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ uses every letter of the alphabet. The words ‘racecar’, ‘kayak’ and ‘level’ are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes). There are only four words in the English language which end in ‘dous’: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: ‘abstemious’ and ‘facetious.’ TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds . A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes. A snail can sleep for three years. Almonds are a member of the peach family. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age. February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon. In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated. If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite! Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated. The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing. The cruise liner, QE 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid. There are more chickens than people in the world. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
I don’t quote ‘Billy G [*]‘ much …. but this one tickled my fancy … a speech he gave to a high school – seems to be all over the web – so not original here ….
1. Life is not fair- get used to it.
2. The world won’t care about your self-esteem: the world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
3. You will not make $60,000 a year right out of high school: you won’t be a vice-president with a car phone till you earn both.
4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity, your grandparents had a different word for it; they called it opportunity.
6. If you mess up, it is not your parents fault so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
7. Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your cloths and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing your own room closet.
8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they’ve abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
9. Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summer off and employers aren’t interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
10. Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
11. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you will end up working for one.
Number 8, will be part of my GOM COM Rant on Gordon
[*]Bill Gates for the uninitiated.
Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, we cover it all!
Check out Number 5.
New Mac Laptop? I don’t know, but I don’t see any big deal to a 12 inch laptop being released. Wasn’t that the iBook? Even if it is faster, flash based, and without an optical drive; I don’t care about it if it iBook size. I’d rather see a 7 inch laptop, under $1000, and flash based. Make something truly portable.
Now that’s what I am talking about !
Quotes from my good friend ~ JC
“You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but
not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.” – Benazir Bhutto
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you
desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you
will.” – George Bernard Shaw
“Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.” – Muhammad
Ali
“Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of
duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards
objective things.” – Albert Einstein
“Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm in two
small jumps.” – David Lloyd George
“You should empower the creativity of others.” – Brad Garlinghouse
“Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making
it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly
possible.” – Hannah Arend
“Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by
teaching cowardice. You water down the standards that could lead to
bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence
in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the
existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly.
You tame.” – Frank Herbert
“You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” – Steven Wright
“Pain is only temporary, giving up is forever.” – Lance Armstrong.
“Words are like bullets; if they escape, you can’t catch them again.”
- Wolof (Senegal, The Gambia)
“The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent
the established order that your ideas will upset.” – Anthony D”Angelo
“The trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more
about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true.” -
Isaiah Berlin
And finally…
“What’s another word for Thesaurus?” – Steven Wright
