Tom McMahon

Illegal German Seventies Art

2009-11-07T20:01:56-06:00

Illegal German Seventies Art

People Are Reflections Of Their Five Closest Friends

2009-11-06T08:10:12-06:00

It’s often said that people are reflections of their five closest friends in many ways: behaviors, income levels, values, and so on.
Five years ago, almost all of my closest friends spent money like it was water. They were constantly doing things like playing poker, pushing each other to “one up” the rest with better gadgets and other material things, going out for drinks all the time, making fun of each other for looking less affluent, and so on. To put it simply, if you didn’t show many signs of material affluence, you were made fun of and ridiculed. You felt like less of a person if you weren’t spending money hand over fist.
Today, all of my inner circle of closest friends are pretty happy just spending an evening together playing cards or a board game. Instead of constantly going out on the town, we go to each other’s homes and hang out, watching each other’s DVD collections or playing each other’s games. We’ll make meals together and eat them together instead of going out for dinner all the time. Instead of talking about who has the latest gadget, we talk about who’s developed a better strategy at a well-played game or what sort of things we’ve been doing to improve the property we already have.
In that same time frame, my own feelings about spending money changed drastically. I went from spending rampantly to being careful about my money. I started spending more time at home rather than out and about, focusing my energy on getting good at a smaller number of things instead of chasing the new.
Perhaps most interestingly, I went from feeling pretty awful about myself to feeling pretty good about myself.

Cicada-Generated Prime Numbers

2009-11-06T08:06:20-06:00

From Neatorama:

Cicadas are winged insects that evolved around 1.8 million years ago during the Pleistocene epoch, when glaciers advanced and retreated across North America. Cicadas of the genus Magicicada spend most of their lives below the ground, feeding on the juices of plant roots, and then emerge, mate, and die quickly. These creatures display a startling behavior: Their emergence is synchronized with periods of years that are usually the prime numbers 13 and 17. (A prime number is an integer such as 11, 13, and 17 that has only two integer divisors: 1 and itself.) During the spring of their 13th or 17th year, these periodical cicadas construct an exit tunnel. Sometimes more than 1.5 million individuals emerge in a single acre; this abundance of bodies may have survival value as they overwhelm predators such as birds that cannot possibly eat them all at once.
Some researchers have speculated that the evolution of prime-number life cycles occurred so that the creatures increased their chances of evading shorter-lived predators and parasites. For example, if these cicadas had 12-year life cycles, all predators with life cycles of 2, 3, 4, or 6 years might more easily find the insects. Mario Markus of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany, and his coworkers discovered that these kinds of prime-number cycles arise naturally from evolutionary mathematical models of interactions between predator and prey. In order to experiment, they first assigned random life-cycle durations to their computer-simulated populations. After some time, a sequence of mutations always locked the synthetic cicadas into a stable prime-number cycle.

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! THE TEETH!

2009-11-05T22:05:47-06:00

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! THE TEETH!

via PCL Linkdump

Stick Figure Museum of Western Painting

2009-11-05T07:31:38-06:00

Stick Figure Museum of Western Painting

(via iconglobe)

Devo Lego

2009-11-05T07:22:44-06:00

Devo Lego

Brown Shoes

2009-11-04T19:06:05-06:00

Brown Shoes

Why Michael "Meathead" Stivic of All In The Family Is Still The Prototype of the American Liberal Smartass

2009-11-04T18:45:29-06:00

From the Assistant Village Idiot:

My politics aligned somewhat with Michael's, but I found him an unlikeable character. The show had clearly lined up to show Archie and his ideas in the worst possible light, buffoonishly so, and this struck me as artistic abuse. As it became clear who Norman Lear and Rob Reiner were in later years, the portrayal of Archie made more sense. They had no understanding of the ideas they were mocking - even I, who also mocked them, found the stereotype to be more worthy of agit-prop than comedy. The artificial setups to always show Michael as the intelligent, thoughtful one held a childish unfairness.
But that wasn't what stuck in my craw. Michael lived in Archie's house. In all the commentary about Archie I never heard that mentioned. I imagine it came up on the show, but it was conveniently overlooked when people absorbed the stereotypes. It seemed the most basic fact about the situation: Gloria had a poorly-paying job, Edith took care of everyone, Archie provided most of the support, yet it was Michael who was delivered the put-down lines.

via The Fourth Checkraise

A Scotsman Gets A Bank Loan

2009-11-04T10:13:42-06:00

A Scotsman walks into a bank in Glasgow and asks for the loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to Australia on business for two weeks and needs to borrow £5,000.

The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Scotsman hands over the keys and documents of new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the Log Book and everything checks out. The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan.

The bank's Manager and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the rough looking Scotsman for using a £120,000 Ferrari as collateral against a £5000 loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank's underground garage and parks it there.

Two weeks later, the Scotsman returns, repays the £5,000 and the interest, which comes to £15.41. The loan officer says, "Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi millionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow "£5,000" ?

The Scotsman replies:

"Where else in Glasgow can I park my car for two weeks for only £15.41 and expect it to be there when I return'"

(from here)

A Robbery in Texas

2009-11-04T07:10:23-06:00

A hooded robber burst into a Texas Bank and forced the tellers to load a sack full of cash.

On his way out the door a brave Texas customer grabbed the hood and pulled it off revealing the robber's face. The robber shot the customer without a moment's hesitation. He then looked around the bank and noticed one of the tellers looking straight at him. The robber instantly shot him also.

Everyone else, by now very scared, looked intently down at the floor in silence. The robber yelled, "Well, did anyone else see my face?" There are a few moments of utter silence, in which everyone was plainly afraid to speak.

Then one old man raised his hand and said," I think my wife may have caught a glimpse of you."

Turkey Deep Fat Fryer Checklist

2009-11-02T20:39:02-06:00

Turkey Deep Fat Fryer Checklist

Sixty Percent of Those Canned French Fried Onions Are Sold Between October and December

2009-11-02T20:04:36-06:00

Sixty Percent of Those Canned French Fried Onions Are Sold Between October and December

From the Washington Post a couple of years back:

They must taste like they have since 1955, when Campbell's invented the homey two-can side dish, your beans and your cream of mushroom soup, a soft, soothing mush of a thing given a kick and a crunch with your can of FFOs....

There's really only one shot for the plant to get its production right. French's mustard and its GourMayo sells all year long, but its onions? Sixty percent of the company's FFO sales come between October and December, say French's officials, or 30 million units of canned onion aroma. ...

To ask why we eat FFOs is an attempt to get at the root of Thanksgiving gluttony itself. There is no reason except that we are Americans and it is our God-given right.

Butterball Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer

2009-11-01T11:17:29-06:00

Butterball Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer

But as of today, November 1, it's only available for pre-order.

Political Comedy Sports

2009-10-30T08:26:26-05:00

Political Comedy Sports

To Larry David and HBO, This Is Just Being Playful

2009-10-28T22:17:47-05:00

To Larry David and HBO, This Is Just Being Playful