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

 

[Fawnn]

Sorry. My brain turned to mush thinking about that "something like it".

Does "something like it" include kissin' Gramma's hubby?

[TexasCowboy]

Not unless Gramma's hubby is the same sex as Gramma.

[Fawnn]

So................how's the weather?

Hottie in these parts! Whaddaya expect? It's August!

[TexasCowboy]

"So................how's the weather?"

Warm........

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Welcome Home!



*HUG*

[Brad’s Gramma]

EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

NO NO NO NO NO!!!

He's a MANLY MAN THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!

[TexasCowboy]

I was going to post Shania Twain, but all I can think about now is airing up my doll and going to bed.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Please post the song instead.

[Fawnn]

I have a request for you:

You wouldn't happen to have The Smother's Brothers singing "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," would you?

I'm pretty sure it's from their "The Smothers Brothers Play It Straight" album. Harpichord background. Theirs was my first introduction to that song before what's her face sang it. (I don't much like their politics, but their older comedy routines were hilarious and them boys can sing!)

[Fawnn]

Please post the song instead.

I second that! ;)

[TexasCowboy]

"Please post the song instead."

Heck! I already had the air compressor going!

[Kathy in Alaska]

Mabel, I believe? Good night and sleep well, Cowboy. God bless you good for your always support of our military, past and present. Prayers of peace for you and yours.

[Brad’s Gramma]

YOU ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BAD!!!!!!!!!


LOLOLOL!!!!!!!

[TexasCowboy]

Now there's one I know I don't have.
I've never had any Smother's Brothers music, not that it isn't good. I just never bought any of it.
You're right that they had a good comedy routine, and they did sing very well.

[Fawnn]

Heck! I already had the air compressor going!

I figured you used that sorta like how you whistle method. < /Lauren Bacall reference >

[TexasCowboy]

GOODNIGHT, Y'ALL!

[Brad’s Gramma]

Good night, sleep well and thanks for the fun on the Canteen!

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

As a sailor, a salesman and an ex-cab driver I'd like to vouche for Texas Cowboy.
You can believe whatever this cowboy and Marine tells you.
Honest!

[TexasCowboy]

"I figured you used that sorta like how you whistle method. < /Lauren Bacall reference >"

Well, I can't do that in public.
Mabel's air inlet is in a rather.......uh, delicate position.

I know!
"GO TO BED!"

LOL!
Color me gone!

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Nite Brother
Thank You for your contributions to the Canteen.
God Bless You