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

 

[minor49er]

*sigh*
And I thought you were starting to grow out of your insanity.

[beachn4fun]

What bank? I came by all this honestly. Honestly, I'm telling ya. Can't prove a thing. Except by tomkow's calculations, that I'm evil.....

[Kathy in Alaska]

"...a pompous, new colonel..."
"Nothing important, sir," the airman replied. "Just here to hook up your telephone."

I LOVE THIS!! Off to email. And thank you to you and LadyHawk for your service to our country.

[minor49er]

I can't prove anything....yet!
Just wait until I get enough evidence to prove it was you robbing those banks.
he he he
LOL! I wouldn't turn you in.
*looks around to make sure no one is lookng and then whispers*
will you teach me how to rob a bank?

[Fawnn]

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

I'm fighting the urge to post a totally inappropriate "sink the Bismark" reference. ;)

[radu]

Hi there, txradioguy! Always great to hear from you!

I'm saying extra prayers for those in the 547th Maintenence Co and 1st AD who were injured. It's good that y'all came up on them in time to be of so much help and get them out of there to safety.

One guy I talked to said it was the second blast he'd survived in 19 days!

That just makes my hair stand on end! I know things are progressing in Iraq, slowly but surely, but it's still far from safe. I keep all our men and women over there in my prayers daily for their safety and well-being.

Keep up the good work. I always look forward to your new radio reports. It's great to hear your voice. And you're more than welcome for the card, my friend. Since you've gotten it, you know there's more on the way. :-) Keep your eyes peeled for those boxes!

Thank you soooo much for the ping, Kathy!!

[tomkow6]

Hi, Radu! How's things in the Bat Cave?

[Brad’s Gramma]

HUBBA HUBBA!!!

[SouthernHawk]

I'll never tell (wink, wink) ! ! !

[Fawnn]

While I appreciate your deep concern for my blood pressure level and heart rate, feel free to throw caution to the wind and include me on any of your HUBBA HUBBA lists. ;)

(Have you told Brad yet that we're holding the circus in your backyard as a belated birthday gift to him? Or are we going to make it a surprise? ... Be sure to stock up on shovels and buckets! The kids will enjoy being asked to participate in the clean-up.)

[SouthernHawk]

Is that a "No Comment" reply? LOL!!!

[blackie]

Love those kind words ... thanks Kathy!

[Kathy in Alaska]

Good to see ya! Should I continue construction of the ark?

[SouthernHawk]

..."how to rob a bank"...

First you find a bank, then you find a hammer...... LOL!!!

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

"Suck it up, Coastie! LOL!! Drink plenty of water before and AFTER!!"

WOO HOO I didn't even pass out this time when I had my blood test!

[radu]

HI TOMKOW!!

Things are getting ready to get soggy here. Thunderstorms rumbling up on us right now. Been amazingly dry here the past few days but it looks like another wet weather pattern is settling in for the weekend. That's ok. We still have our ark ready when we need it. ROTFLOL! From the looks of the radar, we're getting ready for a good soaking. I'd better get off this thing before the storm hits. It's really close now. YIKES!

Hope things are going great up in your neck of the woods.

[Fawnn]

Is that a "No Comment" reply? LOL!!!

(Shhhhhhhhh: It's a Gramma-style secret message.) ;)

[Kathy in Alaska]

The circus is Saturday, and we can never have too many dancing animals. Our troops need all the rays of sunshine and chuckles we can provide. Your assignment, minor, is to go Googling and find one or more dancing animals. You can share one today and save another for the circus. Happy searching!

[blackie]

I said 'driving' not riding ... you drive a pickup and ride a motorcycle.

My Lightning (with the cigar lighter) pickup:

My SV650 (without cigar lighter) Bike:

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

mmmm, uh, I think I failed my blood test.
Because Mars is so close my blood was green.
Is that a good thing?