USO Canteen FReeper Style ~ Pancakes on Wednesday ~ 27 August 2003

Canteen FRiends ~ Radix

[Radix]

For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday...
Thank the Veterans who served in
The United States Armed Forces.

Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom?
Support The United States Armed Forces Today!

Pancakes on Wednesdays

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Welcome to Pancakes on Wednesdays.

Wednesday August 27, 2003

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

Do not forget to hit the hyperlinks.

We have links, lots of them.

SPONDULICKS

Money, cash.

Though originally a bit of mid-nineteenth-century American slang, this has travelled widely, being cast up on the shores of Britain and Australia among other places. It’s a member of a group of words created in a century-long fit of logographical exuberation which also gave the world slumgullion, rambunctious, and absquatulate (not to mention, as Elsie L Warnock did in Dialect Notes in 1913, such otherwise lost treasures as scrumdifferous, hyperfirmatious, and supergobosnoptious).

It would seem from the evidence that spondulicks (either so spelled or as spondulix) was originally American college slang. One of its earliest appearances was in a piece about college life in the New York magazine Vanity Fair in 1860: “My friend the Senior got out of spondulix, and borrowed [my watch] to spout for the purpose of bucking the Tiger” (to interpret, his friend had run out of money and pawned the watch to get some more cash in order to gamble on cards, probably faro). The word was used later by such literary luminaries as O Henry and Bret Harte. From usage data, it now looks to be much more common outside the US, to the extent that the New Oxford Dictionary of English marks it as “British slang”.

Where does it come from? “A fanciful coinage”, the big Oxford English Dictionary says. It has been described as a “perverted and elaborated” form of greenback (you may feel that to believe spondulicks could come from greenback requires a perverted imagination all its own). Eric Partridge suggests it might derive from Greek spondulikos, from spondulos, a species of shell once used as money.

However, Doug Wilson pointed out that that Greek stem is also the source of various English words beginning in spondylo– that refer to the spine or vertebrae. He suggested that a stack of coins may have been likened to the spine, with each coin a vertebra. He found a supporting reference in an 1867 book, A Manual of the Art of Prose Composition: for the Use of Colleges and Schools, by John Mitchell Bonnell. A list of provincialisms included: “Spondulics—coin piled for counting”.

If it is indeed college slang, either explanation may well be the kind of academic joke that would appeal. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine.

About a hundred dollars

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Happy Birthday

Confucius 551 B.C.

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Lyndon B. Johnson (U.S.) 1908

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Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens 1952

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Would you like to do some  Sorting with your pancakes?

Assume that n numbered pancakes are stacked, and that a spatula can be used to reverse the order of the top k pancakes for . Then the pancake sorting problem asks how many such "prefix reversals" are sufficient to sort an arbitrary stack (Skiena 1990, p. 48).

The maximum numbers of flips needed to sort a random stack of n = 1, 2, 3, ... pancakes are 0, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, ... (Sloane's A058986), with the number of maximal stacks for n = 2, 3, ... being 1, 1, 3, 20, 2, 35, 56, ... (Sloane's A067757).

For example, the three stacks of four pancakes requiring the maximum of four flips are , , and , which can be ordered using the flip sequences , , and , respectively (illustrated above). Similarly, the two stacks of six pancakes requiring the maximum of seven flips are and , which can be ordered using the flip sequences and , respectively.

It is known that for , if n is a multiple of 16, and .

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1990 - Stevie Ray Vaughn and three members of Eric Clapton's band were killed in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin.

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1912 - The Edgar Rice Burroughs book "Tarzan of the Apes" was published for the first time.

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1921 - The owner of Acme Packing Company bought a pro football team for Green Bay, WI. J.E. Clair paid tribute to those who worked in his plant by naming the team the Green Bay Packers. (NFL)

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1938 - Robert Frost, in a fit of jealousy, set fire to some papers to disrupt a poetry recital by another poet, Archibald MacLeish.

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1945 - American troops landed in Japan after the surrender of the Japanese government at the end of World War II.

Japanese Surrender Certificate

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I am an excellent driver

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2001 - Work began on the future site of a World War II memorial on the U.S. capital's historic national Mall. The site is between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

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Todays Wednesday field trip is to Xanadu

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Lamborghinis!

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Cincinnatti.

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The maple syrup is defintely supposed to be on the table before the pancakes

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Buick convertible

1949 roadmaster

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hybrid rosebushes

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high functioning autistic

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Wheel of Fortune
Look at these fabulous prizes
Over a hundred thousand dollars in fabulous prizes just waiting to be won

It reminds me of pancakes on Wednesdays

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On this day 40 years ago..........   I can imagine a certain man, in a room, alone. I can almost picture him at prayer concerned about what the morning would bring.   On that day 40 years ago he gave what I consider to be, one of the greatest speeches of all time.

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Pancakes Wednesdays

Definitely

 

[SouthernHawk]

..."Probably 8 feet by 4 feet?? "...

LMAO ! ! ! ! That's not a Burka ! ! ! (Even if Tomkow might wear it!)

[Kathy in Alaska]

Thanks, Meekie, for my morning cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows. Threatening rain all week. Seeing is believing. Hope you get some rain too.

[minor49er]

200!!!! FEEL THE LOVE!!!!

[StarCMC]

Hee hee! Good pic -- I assume that's pre-Atkins panties?? The article of clothing I have is an oblong rectangular piece of fabric. I thought it was a burka, but maybe it has a different name. (?)

[beachn4fun]

OMG....ROTF....LOL.....

[SouthernHawk]

Feel the Love!

[Fawnn]

I finally found some non-yucky-nitrite/nitrate-cured bacon that I can eat and I had SEVERAL BLT's last week. Only I usually don't bother to put the T on the sandwich; I slice up a HUGE ONE and eat an entire tomato with the sandwich. Yum! I had BET ones when I ran out of lettuce. (Bacon Egg Tomato)

Today I made some coleslaw, had a tomato, and a bourbon-glazed grilled chopped sirloin patty!!!

[SouthernHawk]

I think they belong to the Amazon "warrior princess" that BeachN4Fun had visit the Canteen a while back! LOL!!!

[minor49er]

I've never had coleslaw, and as for the patty, I've no idea what bourbon glazed is. The BETs sound interesting, though.
Several BLTs? You are so lucky!

[Fawnn]

Are they available in blue? ;)

[tomkow6]

Those look familiar.........I think I went out with the owner, one very drunken night when I was in the Navy.......

[minor49er]

Sounds like something you would do.

[beachn4fun]

You know, I could almost be a PETA person, except for one thing... I love beef.....MOOOOO

[beachn4fun]

I also have a Rush EIB stainless steel travel mug that plugs into a cigar lighter and keeps the coffee hot while driving.

on your motorcycle? isn't that sloppy? ha...ha....

[minor49er]

Didn't we have enough dancing animals yesterday?
Do we need more?
Save 'em for the circus.
When is the circus, anway?

[beachn4fun]

Hey Mr. Hawk....I really must be EVIL.....look at all my money

[minor49er]

You're rich!
Now we know who was robbing all those banks.

[beachn4fun]

Mr. Hawk are you making fun of my bloomers?

[texson66]

I have this yen for .....(dare I say it) Waffles!

Are you tomkow undercover?....

Eeeewww, not a pretty thought! I've never worn a Burka or been to Burka King or tried to sell'em on this thread!!

....Or related to him?

Why, of course not! (But if he's from Texas, ........well, maybe???? )

[tomkow6]

 

Off Lawrence Expressway near the 101 Freeway onramp in Santa Clara you can find the mysterious stone monument known as Baked Potato Henge. Thousands of visitors come each year to bring sacrifices of artificial bacon crumbs and sour cream.