Indians who were kings at hockey till the mid 1950s lost out and became relatively unknown. They are back in the news after winning a Bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics after decades.
Some reasons journalists attribute to their slow fade to obscurity
Introduction of boots : they were used to playing barefoot
Astroturf : Took them by surprise. they were used to playing on grass and clay. It took decades before there was a AstroTurf field in India.
The game changed. Indians depended on stickwork but the major European teams had more stamina and won easily.
India winning the Cricket World Cup in 1983. Sounded the death knell for hockey. Overnight India became a cricketing nation. Cricket in India now is associated with extreme glamour and riches.
While reading Neal Thompson’s biography of Robert “Believe it or Not” Ripley, I stumbled across the following assertion:
One Inspiration for the Warner Brothers character “Egghead” (who, arguably, evolved into Elmer Fudd) was Robert Ripley.
My understanding of this before was that Egghead was inspired by a virtually forgotten radio comedian named Joe Penner (whose claim to fame was coining the phrase “Wanna buy a duck?”, which enjoyed a mercifully brief run as a catchphrase). Iyt wasn’t clear to me exactly why – Egghead didn’t exactly look much like Penner. (The Wikipedia page on Elmer Fudd says that Egghead’s voice was an imitation of Penner’s).
The suggestion that it was Ripley, though, provides an interesting solution. Egghead appeared in cartoons beginning in 1937, a few years after Ripley began appearing in Warner Brothers shorts. Ripley’s films tended to be travelogues and, of course, his “Believe it or not” material. Egghead’s cartoons included the travelogue spoof The Island of Pingo Pongo and Believe it or Else, suspiciously similar. But the clincher is that Egghead has notably protruding teeth and a verbal stutter, both typical of Ripley himself. Moreover, the early Egghead wasn’t bald (and neither was Ripley).
So a bucktoothed, stuttering narrator of travelogues and Believe it or not for Warner Brothers might be the model for a buck-toothed stuttering narrator of cartoon travelogues and “Believe it or Else” in Warner Brother cartoons. Seems highly likely. Even more likely that Joe Penner being his sole inspiration.
The Wikipedia entry on Elmer Fudd mentions that some people suggested that Ripley might be the model for Egghead. If you follow the reference to the bottom of the page, you find that “some people” is Neal Thompson himself, author of the biography, albeit in an earlier article.
I just stumbled across this on the Huffington Post:
I have to admit, I don’t go to the porn sites, so I wasn’t aware of this. And, perversely, my first reaction was “Why not?” It seemed like, at most, a minor weirdness with no major drawbacks, aside from smelling like a salad. I still find it hard to believe that it’s as bad as the experts say. But not bad enough to anoint myself with the stuff.
So I wonder now what would happen if you used Balsamic or Modena instead of apple cider vinegar. How about good old-fashioned white vinegar? Or wine vinegar?
I suspect the main effect would be that it functioned as an inexpensive birth-control measure. By keeping your partner away.
Depending on her kink, it’s going to greatly reduce the odds of oral, so may actually increase the odds of pregnancy (not that a weak acid that irritates the skin of a penis is going to feel very good inside a woman either).
William Shatner got his first big break at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in the 1950s where as Christopher Plummer’s understudy he had a chance to substitute for him in the title role of Henry V.
Decades later, Plummer appeared in Star Trek VI as the eyepatch wearing Shakespeare-obsessed General Chang, Kirk’s main adversary in the story.
A couple of years back, I was talking to friend at work about the fact that she was concerned about her mother’s foot surgery and how long, if ever, she would be 100% recovered from it. She stated that foot surgery could be very problematic because, “A quarter of your freaking bones are in your feet!”
I thought she was exaggerating, but I fact checked it, and she is correct.
Most of the “legitimate” collective terms are of ancient date, going back at least to 1486 (according to the book linked below) and no one knows who came up with them
That is not correct. Salmons and camels are more closely related to each other than either is to hagfishes.
I’m looking for a good cite, but Wikipedia is cluttered with too much taxonomy and not enough phylogeny. Does anyone know a good online tool that lets one see phylogenetic distance between species? (Paging @Colibri)
