[ Sorry I'm late; I was at a Walk The Moon concert in Detroit. ]
You know how the Internet has changed things? Suppose that you like pumpernickel. In the pre-Internet days you'd probably just go along liking pumpernickel, eating it in appropriate amounts and wondering if you're maybe the youngest English-speaking soul who still eats it on purpose. Certainly nobody you ever meet except your grandparents eats pumpernickel. This might be because you switched to a supermarket, away from the bakery that's in the midst of downtown's bustling Customers Pronking Into Traffic district because it closes fifteen minutes after you get out of work and there was that time you asked about what eight similar-looking loaves were and got into a painfully awkward conversation with them not understanding what it was you didn't understand, and don't ever have to talk with anyone to buy actual bread anymore.
And do please follow the rest of this surprisingly cranky essay over at my humor blog. Also at the humor blog this past week, since the one about Pythagoras and his golden thigh, have been:
- The Competition, pointing to the depository of this year's Robert Benchley Society humor contest entries. Mine is among that set somewhere.
- The Comics (or some of them), which is just further publicity for my math blog and its mathematics comics roundup.
- The Mystery Of My Power Cord, an actual little oddity in which my computer seems to be trying to self-explode, starting from the second-most-replaceable part.
- My Dimmed Stars, about yet another little oddity where someone's gone and passionately voted indifferently about the quality of my writing.
- Forms of New Jersey Local Government (4), continuing the series that tries to explain how my ancestral homeland is governed.
- Singing the Praises of Pants, and my thanks to the powerful Land's End Catalogue Company.
Trivia: In 1863 the Confederacy secured thorugh the French banking house of Emile Erlanger and Company a loan of £3 million, about $14.5 million. It actually realized about £1.8 million of this from loan subscriptions; the rest went to profit, discount, commissions, and market manipulations. Source: The Confederate Nation 1861 - 1865, Emory M Thomas.
Currently Reading: Paris Reborn: Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to Build a Modern City, Stephane Kirkland.