# Your milestone Cecil column **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 29, 2000, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297 "2000-03-29T05:15:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ChiefScott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58f4c7/32.png) [@ChiefScott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChiefScott)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/1 "2000-03-29T05:15:00Z")
I’d stumbled across the Straight Dope column a few times, before I read a column which hooked me and kept me coming back for more. In this column, Cecil was answering questions about the Pythagorean theorum. Insofar as, explaining why you couldn’t measure with a ruler the hypotinuse of a right triangle if sides a and b were both 1. He also delved into imaginary and irrational numbers. I read his sage words and thought to myself, “Damn. I coulda been a math genius if just one of my teachers could have taught the way this guy writes!” This column was in one of his first books. I can’t post a link, I’m sorry, 'cause the search engine won’t work properly due to the ship’s satellite hook-up. Which of Cecil’s columns metamorphosed you into one of the drooling teeming million? * * * Voted **Best Sport** And narrowly averted the despised moniker **Smiley Master** Forward deployed until 18AUG00 ---
**Author:** ![Anti\_Pro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Anti\_Pro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anti_Pro)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/2 "2000-03-29T05:53:00Z")
\ I only wish it were as stylish and sophisticated as your reason! But, alas, it isn’t. It was Uncle Cecil finally solving the Steve Miller Band song lyrics that have driven me crazy looking up what the heck a ‘pompatus’ was and what it had to do with love, anyway. ## I figured if anyone could find out something so obscure and unimportant, then by Henry, he was my leader!! Judy * * * “Um, according to who? Nothing more than a high brow troll, though occasionally the bi polar personality swung in a constructive direction on innocuous topics.” Omniscient ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/3 "2000-03-29T08:01:00Z")
Cecil wrote a [column](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_054.html) in which he answered a question about the number of calories in male ejaculate. Someone wrote in and accused him of making up the question. His reply was priceless; by the time I finished reading it, I was a fan. His column appears in DC in the Washington DC _City Paper_. As I’m generally a conservative, the irony of waiting eagerly for every Thursday to roll around so I could pick up a paper that makes the Washington Post look like something from the John Birch society was not lost on me. Actually, the _City Paper_, leftist as it was, held two joys for me: the weekly Straight Dope and a deep and abiding distrust for Marion Barry, who they began referring to as Mayor-for-Life. - Rick ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/4 "2000-03-29T08:47:00Z")
I’ve known about Cecil for nigh on to ten years now, having first run across his original book “The Straight Dope” in Juneau, Alaska. Wasted a whole afternoon reading it and was hooked. Kinda lost touch with him after that until my debut at Georgetown in 1993 and my first encounter with the Washington _City Paper_. Finally got around to checking out the website and have been here ever since. No one column got me hooked - just the whole ball of style and attitude and plain knowledge that is Cecil Adams. * * * All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are… ---
**Author:** ![Commander\_Fortune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Commander\_Fortune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Commander_Fortune)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/5 "2000-03-29T09:02:00Z")
Pure adoration after this: Schroedinger’s Cat ---
**Author:** ![Commander\_Fortune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Commander\_Fortune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Commander_Fortune)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/6 "2000-03-29T09:04:00Z")
crap. again. [Schroedinger’s Cat](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html) ---
**Author:** ![NothingMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b77776/32.png) [@NothingMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NothingMan)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/7 "2000-03-29T09:44:00Z")
Someone once asked Cecil why a man cannot have sex with a cat. His reply was something akin to : for the same reason you can’t fit a Cadilliac in a broom closet. After laughing to the point of crying, I was forever hooked. * * * “Empty stares from each corner of a shared prison cell . . .” _Pearl Jam_ ---
**Author:** ![billehunt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c37758/32.png) [@billehunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billehunt)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/8 "2000-03-29T10:01:00Z")
There wasn’t a particular column, but it’s gotta be 18 years I’ve been reading Cecil now. Started when I was a teenager working in a theatre shovelling popcorn, and the Reader was available there. The other delight was “Life in Hell.” This was way before “The Simpsons,” when it still had a cult feel to it. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2000, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/9 "2000-03-29T11:25:00Z")
I had two things that got me hooked - the late, lamented A&E show, and then a friend e-mailed me the link for web-site. This column in particular had me in an insane giggling fit: [Is it True False Teeth contain Uranium and Cause Cancer?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/961004.html) Particularly this passage: > [@](#): > > There was also the unavoidable fact that the aesthetic gains achieved using uranium were slight. To see the teeth fluoresce you needed UV light. As one study sniffily noted, “UV lamps are used mainly in some discotheques and restaurants” frequented by “only a very small fraction of the population with these types of restorations.” > > But come on, you’re thinking. If even one guy with fake teeth looked good in a disco, the prospective untimely demise of a whole bunch of other people was surely worth it. > > Even that advantage turned out to be illusory, however. Though it was claimed that the best uranium compounds replicated the white fluorescence of natural teeth, research showed that some porcelain teeth fluoresced red, violet, or bright yellow. In other words, not only were you nuking your gums, but when you opened your mouth you looked like a freaking neon sign. ---
**Author:** ![dekayx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@dekayx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dekayx)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2000, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/10 "2000-03-30T06:12:00Z")
The commander posted it twice, but the column was so good he could have posted it several more times - the the cat in the capsule was definitely the best ever. * * * I am diagonally parked in a parallel universe. ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2000, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-milestone-cecil-column/15297/11 "2000-03-30T02:13:00Z")
Well, I never read the column in a paper; I picked up _Return of the Straight Dope_ shortly after it came out, just because it looked interesting. Looking through it right now, I’d estimate that my continued readership was assured right about page 7 (_If you were to introduce yourself rather grandly as David of the Bowies (and by the way, Dave, what’s a rock legend such as yourself doing in Greenland, Maryland?), people would definitely get the idea that you considered yourself one of the swells._). And my Cecil Discipleship had been clinched long before the end of the book. I had to go around and search for the first two books, and I’ve snapped up each one since then as soon as I could find it in the bookstore. * * * Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99. _Hey, I like that hat, man. They sell men’s clothes where you got that?_