A lot of women don’t get the Stooges’ humor. Apparently they lack Stooge receptors in their brains. It’s not their fault. I understand that the genes that code for Stooge receptors normally only express themselves in the presence of a Y chromosome.
[Philbert Desenex]
“Ah, The island of Lesbos is lovely this time of year, isn’t it?”
[/Philbert Desenex]
RE: Elephant knees.
Elephants do not have four knees. They have five (they keep a spare in their trunk).
Unkilled??? There’s a cure for that, ya know!
More seriously, I am constantly amazed at how many Americans think New Mexico is part of old Mexico. I have a friend who owns a gun shop who finally stopped doing business with a company in the northeast who’s employees kept informing him that they couldn’t take his order because the law didn’t allow them to ship their merchandise outside the United States. On one occasion, I have had a telemarketer complement me on how good my command of the English language was, for someone who lived outside the United States.
Well, first of all, we didn’t call it the Web. We called it the U.S. Postal Service.
The graphics were usually very primitive, although some had photo-quality resolution. There was no audio (well, some, but not everyone had the hardware to decode it). Most information was encoded on paper media using a primitive, frequently non-electric device called a “typewriter”, or sometimes even manually using ink or a graphite-core stylus. It cost (about) a dime or more every time you uploaded anything, although downloading was usually free, if somewhat sporadic.
In case any one’s wondering, my page 3 post was a joke. I just thought of the most obscure thing I knew.
One thing that surprises me, is when people think that reindeer are fictitious. I try to tell them that they are an important part of transportation in northern Finland, and they think I’m trying to be funny. Sometimes I point out that they’re like caribou, which doesn’t usually help. Sometimes I point out that they can’t fly, which sometimes helps.
hehe that reminds me of another one. I was interviewing for jobs in 98, Some headhunter hold me that my skills were good, but the client was looking for someone with 10+ years experience in JAVA.
Um…there was a web back then, wasn’t there? I mean, confined to government comunications, and such, but at the very least there was an intRAnet set up, right?
Wolfman, tell them that you’ve been drinking coffee all your life.
She very well might have been reading a book about knights and pilgrims written in the time of knights and pilgrims. Selections from Chaucer’s “Cantebury Tales” are often taught in into English survey courses. Could be any number of other texts too.
I’ve had several dentist appointments lately to have various bits of work done, including some crowns put in. Last week as I was leaving, I made the appointment for the last in this series of appointments. The receptionist checks the computer, and it turns out December 7th is the day that works for both of us.
She writes me a reminder slip, and as she hands it to me she says “See you on December 7th”, to which I reply (with a slight smile) “A day which will live in infamy”. She looks at me for second or two like I’m an idiot, then suddenly smiles (and I think she’s figured out what I meant) and says “Oh yeah, ‘cause it’s your last appointment!”
“No”, I say, still trying to smile. “Because it’s Pearl Harbor Day.”
Again she gives me the “you are an idiot” look, and says “Oh, OooooKaaaay” in that voice you use to address someone who just said Martians landed in the back yard.
I’m not sure if she’d never heard of Pearl Harbor, never heard (or heard of) the FDR speech, or just didn’t know that December 7th is the anniversary of the attack. I just thanked her and left.
I was umpiring a sandlot game. With the runner on first, one out, a ball was grounded to the second baseman. He bobbled it, held on, then ran and touched second just ahead of the runner. The coach was arguing, not whether he tagged the base or not, but whether there was such a thing as a force play. And he claimed that he was a minor leaguer.
Geographically, England may be part of Europe, but attitudinally it may not necessarily be so. Don’t forget “English Channel Blocked by Fog: Europe Isolated.”
I have a friend who is a very intelligent, highly educated biologist, who has saved at least one species from extinction, and who is regularly interviewed on radio and TV. Since he is a very busy person who spends most of his time in the field, he had never bothered to own a TV until he was in his thirties.
One year he decided that he wanted to view a kayaking video about which several of us were raving, so he went out and purchased his first TV and VCR. He connected the wires at the back by observing the IN and OUT labels, plugged the machines into the power outlet, turned them on, pressed play, and sat back on the couch with us to watch the show. Without having to read the instructions, in a couple of minutes flat he had the TV and VCR out of the box and working, which to mere mortals such as myself is pretty impressive.
His contentment lasted until just past the opening credits, when the VCR shut down. He got up, went behind the machines, and poked and prodded until the VCR started up again. All was well for another couple of minutes when the VCR started to rewind. Again he got up, and poked and prodded the VCR until it started working. Well, to make a long story short, every couple of minutes he would have to get up and fiddle about to fix things – random shut downs, fast forwards, rewinds, pauses.
As this continued, I couldn’t stop laughing. The longer it went on, the more I laughed. Eventually, the poor fellow was so distracted that he said, in a very frustrated voice, that he was going to pitch the machine outside. Only then did I explain to him what a remote control was, and showed him the one for his VCR with which I had been toying.
During the later part of the 60’s, there was a network of computers comprising universities and research facilities. However, there was no web, which didn’t come about until much later. (Hoping someone more knowledgeable will fill in the details.)
A person who only spoke German spent a summer with my friends and me at our canoe club. By carefully coordinating our stories, we taught her of a great many things, including the words to use when greeting someone (you can guess), the names of barnyard animals (milk the horses and ride the cows), and a great many other things related to our language and culture. We ran into a bit of touble by teaching her that in our environmentally conscious society patrons of restaurants are supposed to take the coffee mugs with them when they leave.
The next summer she returned for a canoe trip up trip up north which ended in a dusty First Nations village. Not having used any facilities for a couple of weeks, and not observing any in the village, she asked what to do. I explained that this far north everyone simply uses the ditch at the side of the road. So she did. Boy, did she ever get some strange looks from a few passersby.
What really tickles me is that she was totally oblivious to having her most embarassing moment. One thing is certain though. If I ever am escorted through Germany by her, I will be in for a very rough time of it.
The ARPAnet, granddaddy of the Internet, was born around 1969. It connected certain government facilities (mostly US Department of Defense) and research universities, and didn’t look much like today’s Internet at all.
The World Wide Web, which is one part of the modern Internet, was invented around 1990.
An “intranet” is the modern catchy term for a Local Area Network (LAN), a network within one business or other facility. This has nothing to do with the Internet at all.
Good stories Muffin. I pray I never, ever meet you.
The dentist was talking to the hygenist over my propped open mouth one day. He told her about a coming street fair, which would have booths with all types of ethnic food. She said she’d never had ethnic food before, until he explained that ethnic food is food from other countries. I almost choked on my cotton wads.
Later I had to show her how to multiply the bill by 20% to figure out my copay. Unfortunately, I’m stultifyingly honest or I could have saved myself quite a bit of money.
On most animals, the knees of the back legs do bend forwards, however the knees in question are very high up on the legs. If you look at the following picture, you will see that the cheetahs back knees are close to the actual body, and what would be the ankle on our legs is what most people think of as the knee of the cheetah. The small femur long tibia and long foot give the cheetah and most four legged animals more power in thier rear legs for better speed.
Wonder no more, beakerxf! It is widely known as an “ankle.”
Seriously, though, knees all bend in the same direction (when within normal operating parameters, anyway). In animals such as birds, what we see as the knee is, in reality, the ankle; they walk on the balls of their feet, so the ‘lower leg’ is actually the rest of their foot, and the ‘upper leg’ is really the lower leg. The true knee (and upper leg) is up close to the body, hidden by feathers.
And no, I’m not shocked if people don’t know this. I myself thought birds knees bent backwards until I actually saw a bird skeleton.
Several years ago, the guy next door thought he found a new, cheaper brand of gas. Diesel. He thought it was like Mobil, Shell, Exxon, and Diesel. Unfortunately, they had a diesel option on his car for a few years (think it was a Cutlass). He didn’t notice the pump size difference. Screwed uop his car good. Even people with no licenses laughed at him.
