3. Only one variety of turtle cannot retract into its shell. What is it?
4. Spam is a brand of canned cooked pork created by Hormel in 1937. What two words were combined to create the word Spam?
5. What are the only mammals capable of flight?
The Answers…
1. A puffling.
2. The Ocean Ridge is a 40,000-mile-long mountain range that encircles the globe, 90 percent of which is under water. Formed by the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates, it has been compared to the stitches on a baseball. It is one of the defining features of the planet, but ironically is little known.
3. The sea turtle.
4. Spiced and ham. Despite its reputation, Spam was vital during the Great Depression because it was a cheap and nourishing meat product.
ALBANY, NEW YORK — An employee of the New York Senate was arrested and fired from her job for her role in a protest after hundreds of live cockroaches were released in Albany City Court.
Police said the woman created a distraction so her associates could release the cockroaches, which were smuggled into the courtroom in plastic containers. They said the episode was in protest of arrests last month after a demonstration at the State Capitol about “rent issues.”
According to the officials, the woman began filming arraignment proceedings and refused to stop. While bailiffs pursued her and court officials were distracted, the cockroaches were released. Court was adjourned for the day, and exterminators were called in.
The woman was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, criminal contempt, and tampering with physical evidence. Police said more arrests may be made.
RIDGECREST, CALIFORNIA — A man in full ninja garb and wielding a sword attacked a group of Army trainees at a California airport, injuring two soldiers.
The attack occurred in the middle of the night when the perpetrator approached a lone sergeant and asked, “Do you know where my family is?” When the sergeant said he did not, the man drew his sword and inflicted a cut on the sergeant’s leg. The man then threw a rock through a hangar window, striking a second soldier in the head.
The sergeant ran into the hangar where the other soldiers were gathered and locked the door. As the assailant tried to break down the door, the soldiers called 911.
When police arrived, they tasered the ninja and took him into custody. He was arrested on numerous charges, including attempted homicide, assault, brandishing a weapon, and vandalism.
RUMBECK, SOUTH SUDAN — A local court sentenced a ram to three years in jail after the animal butted a 45-year-old woman in the chest and she died of her injuries.
A police spokesman said, “The ram is the one who perpetrated the crime, so it deserves to be arrested.”
In accordance with local law, the ram will be given to the family of the deceased woman after it serves its sentence. In addition, the owner of the ram was ordered to give five cows to the victim’s family.
If you can convince the lowest white man that he is better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you are picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.
— Lyndon Johnson
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The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
— Oscar Wilde
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Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Extraterrestrial societies could be far more advanced than we are, perhaps by billions of years… and they may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.
Graham Nash wrote “Teach Your Children” while he was a member of The Hollies, but didn’t record it until 1969, after he had moved on to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The song appears on the 1970 CSNY album “Déjà Vu.”
Nash said the inspiration for the song was a 1962 photo by Diane Arbus entitled “Child With Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park.” Noting the boy’s aggressive attitude, Nash said society should be more aware of what children learn from adults about war and violence.
Bonus fact: “Teach Your Children” features Jerry Garcia on the steel guitar.
Teach Your Children
By Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, 1970 Written by Graham Nash
You, who are on the road Must have a code that you can live by. And so, become yourself, Because the past is just a goodbye.
Teach your children well. Their fathers’ hell did slowly go by. And feed them on your dreams, The one they pick, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them “Why?” If they told you, you would cry. So just look at them and sigh, And know they love you.
And you (Can you hear?) Of tender years (And do you care?) Can’t know the fears (And can you see?) That your elders grew by. (We must be free.) And so, please help (To teach your children.) Them with your youth. (What you believe in.) They seek the truth (Make a world.) Before they can die. (That we can live in.)
And teach your parents well. Their children’s hell will slowly go by. And feed them on your dreams, The one they pick, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them, “Why?” If they told you, you would cry. So just look at them and sigh, And know they love you.
1. What is the world’s largest known living organism?
2. What online service has the most users?
3. The term living room surfaced in the late 1800s. What were living rooms called before then?
4. When sea otters sleep, how do they keep from drifting away from each other?
5. Fireflies (Lampyridae), known for emitting light through the chemical process of bioluminescence, are classified as what type of insect?
The Answers…
1. The largest known organism is a massive network of honey mushroom fungus (Armillaria ostoyae) that occupies about 3.4 square miles in eastern Oregon. It is thought to be 2,400 years old. Locals call it the “humongous fungus.”
2. Facebook, which has an astounding 2.9 billion users. That’s more than the populations of China (1.4 billion) and India (1.3 billion) combined.
3. Mostly, they were called parlors, from the French verb parler (to speak) because that’s where people sat and talked. In the 1500s and 1600s, they sometimes were called drawing rooms — short for withdrawing, in the sense of withdrawing there for privacy.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — A marble bust purchased at a Goodwill store for $35 turned out to be a 2,000-year-old Roman carving.
Antique dealer Laura Young purchased the bust and thought it might be a Victorian garden decoration. She kept it on display in her home while friends at a London auction house tried to trace it.
After several years of research, they identified the bust as depicting Nero Drusus Germanicus, a Roman soldier and politician. The bust had been on display in a German museum prior to World War II. They think a soldier brought it to the US after the war, either having stolen it or purchased it from a looter.
The bust currently is on display at the San Antonia Museum of Art and next year will be returned to Germany. “He needs to go home,” Young said. “he wasn’t supposed to be here.”
Young had a replica of the bust made on a 3D printer to keep for herself.
PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA — The official news outlet of North Korea claims that burritos and hamburgers were invented by Kim Jong-il, the father of current Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.
A North Korean newspaper said Jong-il came up with the idea of “wheat wraps” in 2011, shortly before his death from a heart attack. Some years before that, the newspaper said, Jong-il invented a type of hot sandwich, described as “double bread with meat,” that was the forerunner of the hamburger.
The newspaper described the “wheat wrap” burrito as sort of like a gyro with grated cabbage and carrots — more of a spring roll than a burrito.
Despite North Korea’s claims, the burrito probably originated with vaqueros in northern Mexico in the 1800s. Both Germany and the US say they invented the hamburger, also in the 1800s.
FYI, three generations of Kims have ruled North Korea since it was created after World War II. The first dictator was Kim Il-sung, who ran the country from 1945 until his death in 1994. His son Kim Jong-il took over, died in 2011, and was succeeded by the current wacko Kim Jong-un.
LUBBOCK, TEXAS — When told their luggage was overweight, a couple at Lubbock Airport opened the bag and found their pet chihuahua hiding in a cowboy boot.
The couple was boarding a Southwest flight to Las Vegas when a gate agent told them the bag was five pounds overweight. They had the option of paying a fee or transferring items to their carry-ons. To avoid the fee, they opened the suitcase and discovered their five-pound chihuahua Icky inside.
The gate agent offered to keep Icky until the couple returned from vacation, but they contacted a relative who rushed to the airport and took Icky where she was supposed to be, with the couple’s children and babysitter.
Five years ago, the couple found Icky on a remote Texas road, weak and malnourished. When they took her home, their children said the dog was dirty and “icky,” and the name stuck.
Fredric Brown (1906-1972) was a master of short-short stories noted for humor and zinger endings. I’ve posted eight — count ‘em, eight — Brown stories on this blog. Oh, this one makes nine.
Brown wrote both mysteries and sci-fi, and he was amazingly prolific. He wrote his first short story in 1938 and, by the end of his career in the mid-1960s, had published several hundred stories, plus a few dozen novels.
I’m not jealous. Just in awe.
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Experiment
By Fredric Brown Published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1954
“The first time machine, gentlemen,” Professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues.
“True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds, five ounces and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works.”
The small-scale model looked like a small scale — a postage scale — except for two dials in the part under the platform.
Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. “Our experimental object,” he said, “is a brass cube weighing one pound, two point three ounces. First, I shall send it five minutes into the future.”
He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. “Look at your watches,” he said.
They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine’s platform. It vanished.
Five minutes later, to the second, it reappeared.
Professor Johnson picked it up. “Now five minutes into the past.” He set the other dial. Holding the cube in his hand he looked at his watch.
“It is six minutes before three o’clock. I shall now activate the mechanism — by placing the cube on the platform — at exactly three o’clock. Therefore, the cube should, at five minutes before three, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform, five minutes before I place it there.”
“How can you place it there, then?” asked one of his colleagues.
“It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there. Three o’clock. Notice, please.”
The cube vanished from his hand.
It appeared on the platform of the time machine.
“See? Five minutes before I shall place it there, it is there!”
His other colleague frowned at the cube. “But,” he said, “what if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at three o’clock? Wouldn’t there be a paradox of some sort involved?”
“An interesting idea,” Professor Johnson said. “I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not…”
There was no paradox at all. The cube remained.
But the entire rest of the Universe, professors and all, vanished.
Original illustration from Galaxy Science Fiction by David Stone.
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