Do you believe in magic?

Having supper with a few of my fellow dumbs and the conversation turned to the building of the pyramids. It was a detour to our main conversation (which was really just a series of detours in itself). The question was asked about the sort of labor used: slave, craftsmen, paid workers, mid-level project managers, or really, really outsourced labor. I decided to get to the bottom of it by spending six and a half minutes perusing the internets.

Path to Enlightenment in Minutes:

Time on the Internets	Proposed Explanation	Plausibility Score
0-2 minutes	The pyramids were built by slaves.	4
2-4 minutes	The pyramids were built by craftsmen and farmers (otherwise idle during the flooding season).	4
4-5 minutes	The pyramids were built by craftsmen, farmers (otherwise idle during the flooding season) and hoards of slaves.	8
5-6 minutes	The pyramids were built by aliens.*	99

*Hey, I was a doubter, too. But then I read this post in a “Mixed Martial Arts Forum” from a poster known as “The Tunisian Bullcrap Monkey.” Let’s just say, I didn’t have to read all the way through the list before I was a believer. Here is his post, the annotations (hover like a saucer over the highlit words) are mine.

Were The Pyramids Built By Aliens? Over the years i have taken a keen intrest in the ancient civilisations of the world. None however so much so as the Egyptians. I am still baffled to this day, at the powerfull corelations the Pyramids present. I cannot beilive that Human Hands actually made the Pyramids, i have yet to see them close up but many on lookers have been amazed at the precise cutting of each slab. The Human race before the Egyptians were unparralled to Civilisations after it. It seems the Egyptions had an advance concept way beyond there time. Isnt this strange? Consider these facts. There is NO record of the Pyramids being built, such wonders would surely have hordes of records attached to it . The Egyptians had not even invented the wheel yet, but the blocks that they had to carry to build the pyramids weighed about 2 tons each? 4,000 lbs.? What did they do... use cement? In fact, they used so much stone, that if you took all of the stone they used and cut it into 1 foot square blocks, it would extend 2/3 of the way around the earth!!! the fact that even though the sides of the base of the pyramid are some 757 feet long, it still forms an almost perfect square? Every angle in the base is exactly 90 degrees. In fact, the sides have a difference in length of something like two centimeters, which is an incredibly small amount. If you take the perimeter of the pyramid and divide it by two times the height, you get a number that is exactly equivalent to the number pi (3.14159...) up to the fifteenth digit. The chances of this phenomenon happening by sheer chance is remarkably small. Did the ancient Egyptians know what the number pi was? Not likely, seeing as it was a number not calculated accurately to the fourth digit until the 6th century, and the pyramids calculate it to the fifteenth. Fungi found in King Tuts chamber was NEVER found on Earth before. Chambers found recentlly show Humans offering food to some kind of Extra Terrestrial creature and there are drawings of Cylinder shaped discs. there is tons more evidence, personally id like to think that some kind of Extra Terrestrial gave us Knowledge in the past, i belive so, but we as humans always try to find a rational answer. Maybe that answer is in the stars.

I'm sure it is. A Tunisian Bullcrap Monkey said so.

The Secret of Winning is Focus

I don't know why I haven't seen this before. I read a press release recently from which I learned that vanpan.com has secured (is anything in cyberspace, or elsewhere for that matter, ever secured?)a 22nd place result ranking for the search term "crappy Chrysler". Actually, as evidence of my unyielding diligence, I ran the search myself. I'm not clear whether VanPanMan's search was for the terms (crappy and chrysler) or the phrase "crappy Chrysler". When I searched the terms I found him in a number 2 and 10 position. When I searched the phrase, it was also at number 2. But things are fluid.

I started wondering what sort of search would lead one of my pithy missives to show up high on the hit parade. Here are my results.

Thematic Searches:

1. Wittiest Blog - TC'sW didn't appear in the resuts - but I only checked the first 473,280 results.
2. Handsomest Blogger - Google is an imperfect system...obviously.

Term Searches:

1. Loon - The results were a cluttered jumble of fowl, idiots, and foul idiots...And the Workshop was not to be seen.
2. Loon & Obama - The field was too crowded for obvious reasons.
   
3. Loon & "Andre the Giant" - Rank 4.
4. "Andre the Giant" & villanelle - Rank 3. We are getting warmer.
5. Loon & "Andre the Giant" & villanelle - Rank 1. Nailed it.

As I probed and prodded The Index of Everything, as Google will soon be known, it occurred to me that the secret of winning is focus. Being number one is simply a function of choosing the right measuring stick(s). The Workshop, by nature if not design, is simply to eccentric and erratic to become your one-stop-shop for information on Andre the Giant or French poetic forms or loons. But if you happen to be interested in all three...come on in and pull up a chair. I've got your number.

You're In My Territory

A comment by Ms. Capps to the earlier post Hey, No Pushing included a link to an article connecting car bumper stickers to road rage and territorialism. Apparently, the admonition shown here is not intended as a joke.

Because of deficiencies, which I'm sure are entirely my own, I was unable to follow the link Ms. Capps provided. A presumably similar article is to be found here.

I'm not really surprised. Most of those folk make it pretty clear that they are territorial - if you follow my stream of thought.

Hey, No Pushing!

In the Worthy of Mention column is a car I rolled up behind at a traffic light yesterday. I am fascinated by the stuff people put on the back of their cars. They are like little windows into the personalities of the owners.
So you get two messages - the text and the subtext. Mouseover the bumper stickers below for the subtext.







I'm seldom surprised by the content, on either level, of the bumper sticker. I'm always bemused by their willingness to share it or perhaps their obliviousness to what they reveal... Which brings us back to the traffic light and the car idling in front of us.

It was a Volkswagen jetta circa early 80's. On the right rear was a Free Tibet sticker. On the left rear were two bicycle related bumper stickers. The first with an admonition that cars don't own the road and/or that bicycles/bicyclists are people too. The second one looked sort of like this.

So far there is nothing particularly noteworthy or amusing, right? What a jetta with Free Tibet and bikey likes it bumper stickers? (Sure, that might be good for like a half smirk - if you love the environment what's with the gas burning vehicle...if you love bikes why aren't you riding one...) But, what really caught my eye was the juxtaposition of all that with the thing dangling from his rear view mirror.


Fuzzy Dice?
-- No. Roll again.
Christmas Tree Air Freshener?
-- No.
Faux(?) Native American Dream Catcher?
-- Bingo. And how.


I was just taken by this guy's ability to pick a contender.

Can you think of three groups you'd rather take to a property rights dispute?

I mean seriously.

Digging Through the Hopper

It has been brought to my attention that several comments, pithy and insightful, have been trapped in that limbo of submitted but unmoderated. For this, I apologize. Worse yet, some comments have been published but not responded to. Most have centered on the desire for loons - or as an easier to please anonymous commenter wrote - Loons or Bust. To that end, I will give you, dear reader, the choice.

Loons

Huge Bust

For the Good of the Order (FTGOTO)

With two traffic driven server crashes and the time involved in reading and appropriately responding to your comments, a couple of months have slipped by without a posting. But now, dear reader (this is an expression - not just an accurate numerical count of this blog's audience), you can breathe.

That sounds like something that Cecil Adams would say - except for the self deprecating (which Cecil never is nor should be) comment about audience size. If you are unfamiliar with Cecil or his mission to rid the world of ignorance, hasten to his electronic academy here. You should, of course, use the "open link in a new tab" option so that you don't lose your place here and miss the good stuff below.

The good stuff below:

While a thoughtful entry which shines the light on deep existential truths is good reading for the commercial breaks in an episode of Lost. Entries labeled FTGOTO are for nuggets of virtual goodness; links to sites of interest, amusement or revelation.

Do not go to this site unless you have at least 37 minutes to kill.
Bringing math to the masses, sort of: GraphJam.

A personal favorite. I was only three, but even then, my Kung Fu was strong.