USO Canteen FReeper Style ~ Pancakes on Wednesday ~ 5 November 2003

Pancakes on Wednesdays

Welcome to Pancakes on Wednesdays.

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Here is an amalgamation of trivial facts and seemingly useless data.

Do not forget to hit the hyperlinks.

We have links, lots of them.

DEIPNOSOPHIST

A master of dinner-table conversation.

It comes from two Greek words, deipnon, “dinner” and sophist, “a master of his craft; a clever or wise man”. (From the latter we get our modern word sophistry, which has gone down in the world, so that it means arguments that are undoubtedly clever, but also specious or fallacious.) Its origin is the book of the same name that was written by the Greek Athenaeus in about 228AD, in which a group of learned men discuss a great range of issues over dinner. Though a principal subject is food and the preparation of food, from which we learn a great deal about classical Greek cookery, the subject matter ranges very widely. These days, the word seems to turn up most often in the vocabulary of toast masters.

Happy Birthday

Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye) 1912

Would you like some Quarks with your pancakes?

Quarks only exist inside hadrons because they are confined by the strong (or color charge) force fields. Therefore, we cannot measure their mass by isolating them. Furthermore, the mass of a hadron gets contributions from quark kinetic energy and from potential energy due to strong interactions. For hadrons made of the light quark types, the quark mass is a small contribution to the total hadron mass. For example, compare the mass of a proton (0.938 GeV/c²) to the sum of the masses of two up quarks and one down quark (total of 0.02 GeV/c²).

A Question of Scale

Happy Birthday

Elke Sommer 1940

About a hundred dollars!

Happy Birthday

Eugene Victor Debs 1855

Happy Birthday

Will Durant 1885

“Made pessimistic by the wars and politics that filled with sound and fury the pages of most historians, I found that I could recapture my sense of the worth and beauty of life by turning from the dramatic spectacles of military and political conflict to contemplate on the one hand the humane and peaceful life of the people, and on the other the contributions of exceptional men and women to the civilization and culture of their nation and the race. I determined to devote my life to recording the creative, rather than the destructive, things that men had done.”

-- Will Durant

I am an excellent driver

This space was intenionally left blank!

Happy Birthday

Bill Walton 1952

We are counting cards!

I have been professionally trained to drive big Rigs by The United States Army. I am an excellent driver.

The U.S. Department of Labor, the Hudson Institute, and the American Trucking Association (ATA) reports show that more than 450,000 truck drivers will be needed each year through 2005 in order to keep America at it's best.

Happy Birthday

Tatum O'Neal 1963

"Set in Depression-era Kansas, Paper Moon is a miracle of unity. The set design and cinematography combine to give both the flavor of documentary photos and the visual quality of movies from the period, and every performance meshes with the overall tone of sincerity, earnest optimism, and creeping desperation..."

Lemon Souffle Pancakes

1977 - Ozzy Osbourne quit Black Sabbath only to rejoin a few weeks later. He later quit again to pursue a solo career.

Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all,
Or if he moves will he fall?
Is he alive or dead?
Has he thoughts within his head?
We'll just pass him there
Why should we even care?

He was turned to steel
In the great magnetic field
Where he traveled time
For the future of mankind

Nobody wants him
He just stares at the world
Planning his vengeance
That he will soon unfold

Now the time is here
For Iron Man to spread fear
Vengeance from the grave
Kills the people he once saved

Nobody wants him
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
Now he has his revenge

Heavy boots of lead
Fills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can
Iron Man lives again!

Todays Wednesday field trip takes us to the Phantom Zone.

On this day:

1605 - The "Gunpowder Plot" attempted by Guy Fawkes failed when he was captured before he could blow up the English Parliament. Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated every November 5th in Britain to celebrate his failure to blow up all the members of Parliament and King James I.

1872 - In the U.S. Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the presidential election. She never paid the fine.

The 'idea' of 'structurelessness' has created the 'star' system. We live in a society which expects political groups to make decisions and to select people to articulate those decisions to the public at large. The press and the public do not know how to listen seriously to individual women as women; they want to know how the group feels.

The pancakes are hot in the Canteen, come and get em.

1935 - The game "Monopoly" was introduced by Parker Brothers Company.

About a hundred dollars

Monopoly Trivia Contest.

True or False:
1) Escape maps were placed inside Monopoly games and smuggled into POW camps in Germany during W.W.II.

2) Twinkies were inserted into a Monopoly game and smuggled on to the Apollo Eleven spacecraft by Buzz Aldrin.

3) The largest Monopoly board ever required a full city block.

4) The longest Monopoly game ever played was 70 days long.

5) Values of monopoly properties have been adjusted twice for inflation since 1935.

6) In 1986, Donald Trump offered Parker Brothers $9 million to change the property "Park Place" to "Trump Place."

7) Each year the makers of Monopoly produce more than twice as much play money as the U.S. Mint does real money.

8) For a brief period following W.W.II, Monopoly money was used as legal tender in the Mariana Islands.

9) In a recent online poll, the dog was the most popular Monopoly token.

10) In a recent online poll, the candlestick was the least popular Monopoly token.

11) Charles Darrow created Monopoly while unemployed during the Great Depression.

12) Charles Darrow later sold a less-successful game to Parker Brothers called "Father Stan, Where's My Ham?"

13) The "Get out of Jail Free" card can be cashed in for $50.

14) The "Whole Life Insurance" card can be redeemed for $67.

Tiebreaker:
Roughly how much Monopoly money does Parker Brothers produce every year?

1959 - The American Football League was formed.

1986 - The White House reaffirmed the U.S. ban on the sale of weapons to Iran.

There is a reason.

1994 - George Foreman, 45, became boxing's oldest heavyweight champion when he knocked out Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their WBA fight in Las Vegas, NV.

Pancakes by Foreman

1998 - The U.N. announced that the Taliban militia had killed up to 5,000 civilians in a takeover of an Afghani town.

The Taliban movement was formed in Kandahar in 1994 by Islamic students who take a radical approach to interpreting Islam.

Understatement!

1999 - U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft Corp. enjoyed "monopoly power".

About a hundred dollars

Pancakes Wednesdays

Definitely

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.