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Category: Funny Stuff
What amused me
Peanuts and Crackerjack and Seagulls
The seagull habitués of the China Basin corner of San Francisco Bay, where the Giants play, know how to read the scoreboard. When the game gets into the late innings, a few appear, circling McCovey Cove and the right-field bleachers. If a game goes long, they begin to show their annoyance by trespassing into the airspace over the playing field. Fans have been trained to clap and make noise, scaring them away. But only for a few minutes. Extra-inning games are especially infuriating and the birds show their displeasure at being delayed from scavenging leftover ballpark food by flying closer to the field and in greater numbers. When the game finally ends and the crowd finally disperses, the seagulls invade the stands and devour what they consider to be their entitlement.
What the World Needed
Are you embarrassed by the quality of the food photos you’ve posted to Facebook? The folks at the App Store want you to know they have solutions: new apps for your smart phone, specifically designed to help you improve pictures of what you are eating or drinking. Your couscous and beet salad not lit just right to impress your friends? There’s an app for that. The artistic design in the foam of your coffee beverage not highlighted just so? There are apps with filters to help you create your own style.
From the same folks who brought us Y2K.
Longview’s Bridges: Long and Short
Bridges spanning the Columbia River to connect the states of Washington and Oregon often had tolls to pay the construction costs. The tollbooths were usually removed after the construction bonds were retired. The tolls were generally collected at the Oregon side, leading one to believe that Washington was not to be trusted with the revenue.
The Longview Bridge, connecting Longview WA and Rainier OR was privately built and owned. Lumber magnate Robert Long – namesake of the town – was the driving force behind the $5.8-million bridge that opened in 1930 with $1.00 toll for cars and 10¢ for pedestrians. (No record of which end of the bridge collected the toll.) The state of Washington purchased the bridge in 1947 and discontinued the toll in 1965 when the bridge was paid for. The name was changed to Lewis and Clark in 1980. The bridge, 340 feet above the river at its peak, is 8,288 feet long.
Longview also boasts another privately-built bridge. At 60 feet, considerably shorter than the Lewis and Clark, the Nutty Narrows Bridge opened to squirrel traffic in 1963. Local resident Amos Peters was disturbed by the carnage of squirrels trying to cross Olympia Way, a busy thoroughfare in Longview. With assistance from a local architect and an engineer, Amos and a friend built the bridge. It soon received publicity and fans around the world. With construction cost of $1,000, it never had a toll, but squirrels generally do not carry cash.
The Nutty Narrows Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.
In the Neighborhood
How Christians Gave Fools Their Own Day
If you missed New Year’s Day, April Fools’ was created for you.
Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1, and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1, became the butt of jokes and hoaxes.
(from history.com)
Increasingly annoyed by Martin Luther and the growing Protestant Reformation, the pope convened an ecumenical council in the northern Italian city of Trent. The Council officially declared much of the Protestant ideology as heresy. As modern-day politicians slip partisan or pork-barrel amendments into unrelated legislation, the Council of Trent added to its decrees a provision to clean up the Julian calendar and provide for a more consistent scheduling of Easter. Eventually the new Gregorian calendar became the standard in most of the world.
So how did they simplify the scheduling of Easter? The Christ’s resurrection is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox (the first day of spring).
As with Christmas, Easter is based – co-opted, if you will – on pagan celebrations related to cycles of the moon, the equinox, the seasons and resultant things in nature. Spring festivals celebrated the earth’s return to fertility and the birth of many, ahem, creatures. Christians related resurrection with rebirth and consequently, the Easter egg. So of course, in modern times, the eggs became chocolate.