by Garth Sundem
SYMBOLISM OF THE REVERSE SIDE OF THE ONE-DOLLAR BILL
• The separated top of the pyramid shows the unfinished United States.
• The shadow cast by the pyramid represents the undiscovered lands to the west.
• The rising sun represents the new nation.
• The eye may or may not represent the Illuminati secret society.
• The free-standing shield represents the country's ability to stand on its own.
• An eagle looks toward an olive branch but also holds arrows—looking toward peace but ready for war.
• The number 13 symbolizes the original colonies and is represented by the stars above the eagle, steps on the pyramid, letters in ANNUIT COEPTIS, letters in E PLURIBUS UNUM, vertical bars on the shield, horizontal stripes at the top of the shield, leaves on the olive branch, berries on the olive branch, arrows, hats, and the combined symbols of 1776 and its Roman numeral (MDCCLXXVI).
THE QUOTABLE HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
SKELETOR: Tell me about the loneliness of good, He-Man. Is it equal to the loneliness of evil?
MAN-A T -ARMS: Never think while you're hungry.
EVIL-LYN: Outnumbered? Outclassed is more like it.
MAN-A T -ARMS: That's very interesting, but silly.
SORCERESS: Men who crave power look back over the mistakes of their lives. Pile them all together and call it destiny.
HE-MAN: By the power of Grayskull! I have the power!
HOW TO HAVE SEX ON SECOND LIFE
Buy genitalia
Buy desired “scripted” devices (clothes, bed, toys, etc.). These devices will animate your character's actions for the desired use (may have to click “pose ball”).
Find private area or sex club. Many free orgy rooms exist, or pay to play in a private sex room.
Either hire an escort (500–1,500 Linden Dollars or $2–$6 per session) or hit on an avatar by chatting, Skype, or phone.
Let the good times roll.
SUDOKU STRATEGY
If you've ever solved a Sudoku puzzle, you've used these strategies, but you might not have known their names. Check the later list entries for advanced strategies, guaranteed to crack even that diabolical New York Times Will Shortz nightmare.
1. Squeezing: using two of the same number in related blocks to infer the necessary placement of the same number in the third block.
original cast of He-Man included the voice of Dolph Lundgren as the title hero and Courtney Cox as Julie Winston. Frank Langella, winner of three Tony Awards, provided the voice of Skeletor. Note: Despite popular misconception, He-Man has been governor of neither Minnesota nor California.
2. Cross-hatching: using solved numbers to rule out both vertical and horizontal options, leaving only one possible space for a given number.
3. Three or fewer: when squeezing and cross-hatching are played out, look for boxes, rows, or columns with three or fewer options. Mark these options in pencil.
4. Continue to cross-hatch: Look for ways to eliminate numbers from your three-or-fewer lists.
5. Spotting the lone number: if (as in the example from number 4) your pencil marks leave only one available option for a number, you have solved this number.
6. Advanced cross-hatching: expand your mind. Can you correctly place a 3 in the upper-right box in the example below?
MORAL LESSONS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MONSTERS OF THE ODYSSEY
Calypso: the lonely nymph who waylays Odysseus for eight years on her island of Ogygia. Though the beautiful Calypso offers ease and even immortality, she is in fact selfish, caring only to alleviate her own loneliness. Watch out for self-serving kindness.
Cyclops: Polyphemus, the Cyclops, traps Odysseus and his crew in his cave and eats six men before Odysseus gets him drunk, blinds him with a wooden stake, and escapes with his remaining crew by hiding under sheep. Polyphemus, with his one eye, represents a person with only one point of view. Beware: if you are monofocused and that monofocus fails, you are SOL, just like Polyphemus.
Circe: the nymph whose palace on the vowel-heavy isle of Aeaea is defiled by Odysseus's men. Circe turns the greedy men into pigs. (And then back to men when Odysseus threatens her.) Circe is rather blameless in this exchange, but from the crew's actions on the island, we should learn not to be greedy pigs.
The Sirens: if Odysseus had not been chained to his ship's mast, surely he would have jumped overboard toward the Sirens’ song describing his heroics in the Trojan War. Keeping with Homer's track record of rather misogynistic morality (nymphs, Sirens, etc., all equal bad news), we should learn from the Sirens not to be overly in love with our past.
The Lotus Eaters: the gentle hippies of the Odyssey. The moral: don't do drugs. Also, beware distraction of any type.
Scylla: as Odysseus sails past, Scylla reaches from her cave to pluck away six of his men—one for each of Scylla's six heads. Scylla represents sudden tragedy, with which we should learn to deal as well as Odysseus.
Charybdis: the whirlpool monster that sucks in O's ship (though Odysseus clings heroically to a branch until Charybdis closes and the danger is passed). Like the gravitational pull of a black hole, at Charybdis's outskirts, you might not know you are caught in a deadly current. Beware of getting sucked slowly into things that plan to eat you.
CAFFEINE LEVELS IN DESIGNER COFFEE
A 2004 study commissioned by the Wall Street Journal found that coffee purchased in designer houses such as Starbucks and Seattle's Best has, on average, 56 percent more caffeine than similar coffee purchased at 7-Eleven, and 29 percent more caffeine than coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. The Journal also found that people purchased coffee to avoid an irritable no-coffee state rather than for perceived positive effects, leading some to question whether said designer coffee houses are involved in a massive addiction and mind-control conspiracy aimed at world domination by said companies’ top geeks. Note: in terms of bang for your buck, drip coffee reigns supreme.
A SAM LOYD PICTURE PUZZLE
Cut this picture of a dog's head into two equal shapes.
THREE STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL EXORCISM
There are many mediums in which evil spirits may reside (most notably dwellings, persons, and computers), each requiring its own specific rite of exorcism. The steps enumerated below deal specifically with human exorcism, or ridding the body of an undesired spirit/demon possession, in the Roman Catholic tradition.
Note: before performing an exorcism, evaluate the subject's potential for violence (with the strength and malignity of the possession in mind), and restrain accordingly, usually with ropes, straps, or duct tape.
Note II: The following ritual may or may not work with computers, depending on operating system and waterproofing.
Priest is dressed in cassock, surplice, and purple stole.
Trace sign of cross over self, person possessed, and all present. Sprinkle all with holy water.
Recitation by priest and response by those present of the Rite of Exorcism, including the following highlights:
• I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every satanic power of the enemy, every specter from hell, and all your fell companions!
to Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's goto guy for exorcism and honorary president for life of the International Association of Exorcists, a curse can originate from “maledictions by close relatives, a habit of blaspheming, membership in the Freemasonry, spiritic or magic practices, and so on.” If you feel that you are or may be possessed by a malignant spirit, you should immediately employ the following steps (a Roman Catholic stop, drop, and roll):
Immediately reject any and all types of unnatural insights.
Avoid drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, and pornography.
Terminate associations with Freemasonry, Eastern religions, and the Harry Potter series.
Install the newest version of Catholic Firewall.
• I adjure you, ancient serpent, by the judge of the living and the dead, by your creator, by the creator of the whole
universe, by Him who has the power to consign you to hell, to depart forthwith in fear, along with your savage minions, from this servant of God!
• Therefore I adjure you, profligate dragon, in the name of the spotless Lamb, who has trodden down the asp and the basilisk, and overcome the lion and the dragon, to depart this man!
2002, former United States Attorney General John Ashcroft said, “There are only two things necessary in life-WD-40 and duct tape … WD-40 for things that don't move that should, and duct tape for things that do move but shouldn't.” In 2005, the Henkel company sold enough Duck brand duct tape to wrap around Earth twenty times.
• Begone now! Begone, seducer! Your place is in solitude; your abode is in the nest of serpents; get down and crawl with them!
NOTABLE EMERGENCY USES OF DUCT TAPE
• At the Salt Lake City Olympics, snowboarder Chris Klug used duct tape to repair a broken binding and went on to win a bronze medal in the parallel giant slalom.
• In duct tape occlusion therapy a square of the tape is worn over a plantar wart until the wart disappears.
• In NASA'S famous Apollo 13 incident, the astronauts used duct tape to connect square carbon dioxide filters to the lunar module's round receptacles.
• In 1942, the U.S. Army used “duck tape” to seal cases of ammunition against rain and humidity.
• NASA astronauts aboard Apollo 17 used duct tape to attach extra-long wheel covers to a lunar rover, reducing the amount of lunar dust the rover kicked up.
• In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security advised Americans to stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting for use in sealing homes after a potential biological or chemical attack.
• In April 2000, Gemini Wink found himself lost in a Florida swamp and instead of spending the night on the ground, he climbed a tree and duct-taped himself to the branches.
THE GREAT MYTH OF THE METRIC SYSTEM
Pierre-François-André Méchain and Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delam-bre—in addition to their names implying equally indecisive parents—spent the years 1791–1799 measuring the length of Earth's arc between Dunkirk, France, and Barcelona, Spain. They endured the hardships you would expect of late-eighteenth-century travel, including imprisonment by skeptical townspeople. By measuring this arc, the pair hoped to calculate the distance from the North Pole to the equator, allowing them to standardize the meter as one ten-millionth of this span.
It was a noble goal: relating all lengths to this meter would de-fine all distances based on their ratio to Earth—a natural system of measurement!
Unfortunately, they blew the calculations. Messrs. Méchain and Delambre forgot to adjust for oblateness—Earth is not a perfect sphere, as they assumed in their calculations; it's flattened at the poles. And the planet isn't uniform; it's lumpy. So each meridian is, in fact, a different length.
Other metric measurements are based on the flawed meter. The liter is defined as a cube with sides of 0.1 meter, and the kilogram as the mass of a liter of water at maximum density. Thus, while the metric system sucks much less than the system of English units, it is still based on human rather than natural definition.
THE SCOUTING HIERARCHY
CUB SCOUTS
Bobcat
Tiger Cub
Wolf
Bear
Webelos
Arrow of Light
BOY SCOUTS
Phase I
Scout
Tenderfoot
Second Class
First Class
Phase II
Star
Life
Eagle
GREAT MOMENTS IN PRE-1980 KUNG FU MOVIES
A BIT OF CARD-BASED MATHEMATICAL FLIMFLAMMERY
While your co-geeks may out this as a simple math trick, most people unable to recite pi past the decimal point will be amazed. It also has the advantage of requiring almost no physical, sleight-of-hand expertise.
1. Set the deck—from the top down, it should read 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, A, A, A (the numbers in any suit and all four aces).
2. Shuffle, being sure not to affect the top twelve cards (yes, this is a cheap trick).
3. Ask an audience member to pick and state a number between ten and nineteen.
4. Taking one at a time from the top of the deck, count that many cards into a face-down pile on the table.
5. Ask your dupe to add the two digits of his/her number and state the sum.
6. From your small pile, count that many cards back onto the top of your larger deck (throughout you will reverse and reinstate the original order—don't lose it!).
7. The next card in your small pile is the first ace. Turn it face up and leave it out.
8. Place the remaining cards in your small pile back atop the deck.
9. Fake another shuffle and repeat steps 3 to 8 two more times (finding two more aces).
10. To finish, ask your dupe to think of a number between one and nine, and then have him/her count that number of cards off the top of the deck, turning the last card face up. If he/she picked the number nine, the card turned over will be the ace.
11. If he/she did not turn over the ace (i.e., didn't pick the number nine), then have him/her count additional cards from the deck, the number of additional cards matching the number on the card they overturned (i.e., if your dupe turned over a three, have him/her count off three more cards). The face-up card counts as the first! The last card dealt is the final ace.
THE CLASSIC LOGIC PROBLEM
The vast majority of geeks will be familiar with the technique for solving logic problems from their early experiences with Games magazine. If you are a little rusty—and/or if you are getting ready for the logic section of the GRE—check out the example on the next page (chart given: place X's in the spaces that are ruled out, and O's in the answers).
PROBLEM
Tom, Fred, Bill, Andy, and Carl are all aging athletes and each is the worse for wear. Can you match each former star to his sport and injury?
CLUES
1. Tom played soccer, so his arms still work perfectly, unlike the baseballer, who has a torn rotator cuff.
2. Strangely, the fellow who used to curl was sidelined due to multiple concussions while the footballer hurt his hip.
3. Despite living in Minneapolis, Andy has always hated curling (as does Bill), which is for the best because Andy's bum wrist would limit his involvement anyway.
4. Carl hurt something below the waist playing one of the big-three American sports.
THE RULES OF PIG LATIN
1. If a word starts with a consonant, move the consonant (or consonant cluster) to the end of the word and add ay. For example, pig becomes igpay, and brain becomes ainbray.
2. If a word begins with a vowel or silent consonant, just add “way” to the end. For example, Intel becomes Intelway, and anime becomes animeway.
FIVE COOL CONSTANTS FROM THE WORLD OF PHYSICS
FOUR GREEK MYTHS IN EXACTLY 200 WORDS
CUPID AND PSYCHE:
Cupid is sent by the jealous Venus to curse Psyche, but instead falls in love with her. They snog, with one condition: Psyche can never light the lamp to discover Cupid's true identity. Oops, she blows it and loses Cupid. To get him back, Psyche has to please Venus. With supernatural help, Psyche succeeds and scores both Cupid and immortality.
PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA:
Prometheus tricks Zeus into accepting a subpar offering from mankind. Zeus punishes mankind by withholding fire, but Prometheus steals it. Zeus further punishes mankind by sending the first woman, and also chains Prometheus to a rock where every day an eagle eats his liver. Zeus 2, Prometheus 0.
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE:
The two were married, but Eu-rydice dies of snakebite. Orpheus journeys to the underworld, where his music softens Hades’ heart, who allows Orpheus to take Eu-rydice back to the living—as long as he doesn't look back before reaching the surface. He does. She dies.
DAEDALUS AND ICARUS:
King M
inos imprisons Daedalus. To escape, Daedalus makes wings of wax and feathers for himself and his young son, Icarus. Icarus flies too close to the sun, softening the wax, falls into the sea, and drowns.
