Stuff
This page leads you to a veritable olio of stuff I hope
will entertain you. Or at least some of it. Or at least some of you.
Immediately below is a list of what's immediately below the list immediately below.
Also, see the sidebar at right.
Here are a few pages about Dan Quayle and burning his
flag I insist you find
interesting.
Choose one of the two links below:
 I respect
his flag, and I want to read more about it.
I
want to read more either way.
Crossword Puzzles
I've been working crossword puzzles for a few years now, and awhile
back I decided I had something to say about them, so I wrote it down. Then I
realized my handwriting is kind of hard to read, so I typed it out for this Web site.
OK by me. If you promise not to drift off into other
subjects, I want to read the essay on crossword puzzles.
IRC
IRC is short for Internet Relay Chat, the worldwide chat room.
If you've never heard of IRC, get started here. If you are an IRC pal of mine, hi.
Okey doke, tell me more about Internet Relay
Chat (and the game of 20 Questions and the game of Charades).
Words
Not a few words about a few words, in one
long page. You'll find one or two places where (not when) I have
not finished, and I've left them in, which I wouldn't normally do,
because I need your help.
If you're more intelligent than 98% of humans you can join a club
called Mensa. I tried to join by paying nine bucks to take a pre-qualifying test,
and I concluded that the test is illegitimate. Do you agree?
Show me the unfair Mensa test.
Betting the lottery requires a knowledge of fundamental probability
theory, and I know all you need to know.
I want to learn it.
Odd Poem
You can read a poem I wrote. It's the only poem I ever wrote,
for reasons that will quickly become obvious.
OK by me. I want to read the poem.
Stories of a Claims Adjuster
Even if you don't read any of these
other stories so far, at least try this
one.
Logical Fallacies
There are many ways to make mistakes in logic, and most of them have
names and understandable explanations.
As I see it, we humans should never fall prey to logical fallacies. The less we do the better, and it's useful to know which
ones are available to trip us up, to make us make mistakes.
And, to be frank, how to use them to get our way.
So far there are only a few I can recommend, but I have not surfed the Web much. If there are any you think should be added, just
.
- "Car Talk" is a funny weekly
radio show.
- The Onion is a funny
online newspaper.
- How to Be
Persuasive. This'll take you a few minutes to read from
beginning to end, which you should do. Or way more than a few
if like me you find yourself laughing really hard for a long time
each many times. My sides literally hurt the next morning.
- For several months in this space prior to February of 2001 I linked to a hilarious but harmless page at a site called Christian Web Site
Designs. Then it disappeared, which was too bad. Then I discovered how to
resurrect it.
- Darwin Awards is a justifiably well-known Web site you should peruse or at
least know about.
- Snopes is pretty good at answering whether something you heard
is true.
- Straight Dope is a trove of
useful and sometimes weird information in the form of questions asked by random people
and answered by Cecil Adams, once a week since 1973.
North of Canada, etc.
Bar bet. This is a simple exercise in eidetic memory,
specifically your memory of the hundreds of times you've seen maps of North America.
Here's the question:
How many U.S. states have any portion of their borders north
of the southernmost part of Canadian land?
(This is not a trick question. For example, it's not like
Canada owns some unheard-of territory in the South Pacific.)
OK, tell me the answer, but do not digress.
If your name is Alex who worked for
Habitat for Humanity KCMO
and if you lost five bucks on this bet, now you know the reason is that
the person you bet against just happens to be the person who knows --
better than anyone else on the planet, apparently -- what the answer is.
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Three Noises
Because
this is an extremely multimedia site, you can listen to three noises here -- a one-second
buzz, a cute and a cuter.
OK by me. Let me
hear the three noises.
One Animated GIF
This is such an extremely multi-media site that we
also bring you an original animated gif.
I was tickled by the realization a few years ago that
the word "rotator" is spelled the same backwards as forwards. If I were
better at building animated GIFs, the one below (which is supposed to be two gears
rotating against each other) would be much more impressive.
Click
?
at the top of any page to see all the nifty navigation aids, including
Search Site and Site Map.
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You can't yet read about my take on
religion.
You can't yet read about my take on
capital punishment.
You can't yet read about my take on boxing.