Celia's

 

From: Icanhascheezburger.com

The contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels takes its name from the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who began his "Paul Clifford" with "It was a dark and stormy night."

The winner of the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Sue Fondrie, an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh who works groan-inducing wordplay into her teaching and administrative duties whenever possible. Out of school, she introduces two members of the next generation to the mysteries of Star Trek, Star Wars, and - of course - the art of the bad pun. Prof. Fondrie is the 29th grand prize winner of the contest that that began at San Jose State University in 1982.

At 26 words, Prof. Fondrie's submission is the shortest grand prize winner in Contest history, proving that bad writing need not be prolix, or even very wordy.

From Peter Scott's Library blog

Some examples

The Winner:

Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.

Sue Fondrie

 

Runner-Up:

As I stood among the ransacked ruin that had been my home, surveying the aftermath of the senseless horrors and atrocities that had been perpetrated on my family and everything I hold dear, I swore to myself that no matter where I had to go, no matter what I had to do or endure, I would find the man who did this . . . and when I did, when I did, oh, there would be words.

Rodney Reed

 

Winner: Adventure 

From the limbs of ancient live oaks moccasins hung like fat black sausages -- which are sometimes called boudin noir, black pudding or blood pudding, though why anyone would refer to a sausage as pudding is hard to understand and it is even more difficult to divine why a person would knowingly eat something made from dried blood in the first place -- but be that as it may, our tale is of voodoo and foul murder, not disgusting food.  

Jack Barry

 

Winner: Crime

Wearily approaching the murder scene of Jeannie and Quentin Rose and needing to determine if this was the handiwork of the Scented Strangler--who had a twisted affinity for spraying his victims with his signature raspberry cologne--or that of a copycat, burnt-out insomniac detective Sonny Kirkland was sure of one thing: he’d have to stop and smell the Roses.

Mark Wisnewski

 

Winner:  Historical Fiction

Napoleon’s ship tossed and turned as the emperor, listening while his generals squabbled as they always did, splashed the tepid waters in his bathtub.

John Doble

 

Winner:  Purple Prose

As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue. 

Mike Pedersen

 

Winner:  Romance 

As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand—who would take her away from all this—and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had.

Ali Kawashima

[From Celia, this is my favourite]

 

Winner:  Sci Fi 

Morgan ‘Bamboo’ Barnes, Star Pilot of the Galaxia (flagship of the Solar Brigade), accepted an hors d’oeuvre from the triangular-shaped platter offered to him from the Princess Qwillia—lavender-skinned she was and busty, with two of her four eyes what Barnes called ‘bedroom eyes’—and marveled at how on her planet, Chlamydia-5, these snacks were called ‘Hi-Dee-Hoes’ but on Earth they were simply called Ritz Crackers with Velveeta. 

Greg Homer

 

Winner:  Vile Puns 

Detective Kodiak plucked a single hair from the bearskin rug and at once understood the grisly nature of the crime: it had been a ferocious act, a real honey, the sort of thing that could polarize a community, so he padded quietly out the back to avoid a cub reporter waiting in the den. 

Joe Wyatt

 

For more :

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2011.htm

Save The Words: For words that are considered by some to be archaic, out of date, and passe, here is a website where you can find such a word; and are encouraged to adopt it. Turn on your speakers to fully appreciate the experience of being pleaded with, cajoled, and teased as you hover over words from days gone by. I love the various voices and accents - all with the same message: please adopt me. It's a mix of humour and oddly touching sentiment, not to mention educational information as the flyout displays the meaning of the word that draws me back to this site again and again.

The Eggcorn Database: Beyond words alone, there are also sites that deal with phrases, and two of my favourites deal with erroneous interpretation of phrases. My brother introduced me to eggcorns a few years ago when he showed me a scholarly article from one of his professional journals called Military Lawyer entitled "For All 'Intensive' Purposes" (PDF). An eggcorn is a phrase containing a substitution of words (usually a homophone or a near homophone); yet, to the user of the phrase, it seems logically correct: "French benefit" for "fringe benefit" or a "mute point" for a "moot point," for example. Eggcorns make me giggle and laugh aloud.

KissThisGuy: Similar to eggcorns are misheard lyrics called mondegreens. Perhaps it because I had the LP and could read the liner notes and learn the lyrics as written/sung that I could never understand how my sister (for whom I have my own special eggcorn - sea-star) thought the refrain from Carly Simon's song The stuff that dreams are made of was "it's the stuffed and green tomatoes". To this day, she believes these are the lyrics. KissThisGuy offers a slew of mondegreens which always makes me smile, grin, guffaw, or even chortle and burst into laughter.

From Freepint:  My favourite tipples by Mary Silva Whittaker

http://rlv.zcache.com/year_of_the_cat_kids_tee_tshirt-d235528894226746483uakc_210.jpg

 

And for those young enough to remember the 70s: Al Stewart "The Year of the Cat" :

 

DINGLE, Ire. – After years of extensive searching, the lost city of Atlantis has been found – on Google Maps!

The reports are in from officials at Google Maps. They say the computer-based cartography system, which provides high-resolution satellite images for geographic locations around the world, beamed hundreds of photos from the lost city of Atlantic back to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.[...]

 

... Ford Madox Ford recommended instead that readers "open the book to page ninety-nine and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you". A new website, page99test.com, launches next month to test that premise. It will offer (courageous) authors and aspiring authors the chance to upload the 99th pages of their works and invite readers to comment on whether they would buy, or like to read, the rest...[More]

Optimal shirking

July 13th, 2010

Click to continue reading “Optimal shirking”

 

From Annals of Improbable Research

via Education: Improbable research | guardian.co.uk by Marc Abrahams on 7/12/10

Years of research have resulted in the definitive way to pour the best second cup of coffee

There is a best way – mathematically– to pour your second cup of coffee, says a study called Recursive Binary Sequences of Differences that will appeal to anyone who is truly pernickety about their beverages.

But no one realised it until the year 2001, when Robert M Richman published his simple recipe in the journal Complex Systems. During the subsequent passage of nine years and billions of cups of coffee, the secret has been available to all.

"The problem is that the coffee that initially comes through the filter is much stronger than that which comes out last, so the coffee at the bottom of the pot is stronger than that at the top," says Richman. "Swirling the pot does not homogenise the coffee, but using the proper pouring pattern does."

Here's all you have to do. Prepare coffee – two cups' worth – in a carafe. Now get two mugs, call them A and B. Then: "If one has the patience to make four pours of equal volume, the possible pouring sequences are AABB, ABBA, and ABAB."

Choose ABBA.

That's it. You now have two nearly-identical-tasting cups of coffee.

Richmond tells what to do if you're pernickety: "If one wishes to further reduce the difference and has more patience, one can make eight pours of equal volume, four in each cup. The number of possible sequences is now 35." The optimal sequence, he calculates, is ABBABAAB.

And if you are more finicky than that, Richmond neglects you not. "With even more patience, one may make 16 pours, eight into each cup. There are now 6,435 possible pouring sequences." ABBABAABBAABABBA is the way to go.

This same blending problem crops up elsewhere in modern life: in distributing pigments evenly when mixing paint, and even in choosing sides for a basketball game. "Consider the fairest way for "captain A" and "captain B" to choose sides," Richman instructs. The traditional method – alternating the choices – leads to unequally strong teams. Instead, use the coffee recipe, which is "likely to result in the most equitable distribution of talent". Insist that captain A has the first, fourth, sixth, and seventh choices, while captain B has the second, third, fifth, and eighth choices."

The mathematics in this study looks at coffee production as a collection of "Walsh functions". These are trains of on/off pulses that add together in enlightening ways.

The monograph ends modestly, or perhaps realistically, with a wistful thought: "As is typically the case with fundamental contributions, scientifically significant applications of this work may not appear for some time."

Richman recently retired as a chemistry professor at Mount St Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He now has more time to devote to this mixing business, with pleasure.

"It took me over 10 years to develop the mathematics to solve this problem, which is well outside of my primary area of expertise. I'm trying to find a classical number theorist who is willing to collaborate on the sequel: I think I can definitively establish the best way to pour three cups of coffee".

• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize

July 7 – Chocolate Day

The Sweet Science of Chocolate

http://www.exploratorium.edu/chocolate/

This site contains two features related to the science of chocolate: the video archives of a 1999 Valentine’s Day event at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and an interactive feature that “takes a closer look at the sweet lure of chocolate.” Discusses the history of chocolate, the chocolate-making process, possible health effects, and more. From the Exploratorium.

ChocoLocate:  The Chocolate Lovers’ Page

http://chocolocate.com/

Directory of annotated websites relating to chocolate in some way, such as retailers, suppliers, food industry associations, and others sites offering recipes. Search by keyword or browse by type of business or location. Created and maintained by a hobbyist.

July 10 –  Teddy Bear Day

Teddy Bear Search Engine

http://www.teddybearsearch.com/

Provides a search engine and directory of worldwide sites related to teddy bears. Sites can be browsed and searched in several ways, including keyword, artist, product/material, features, country, and language. Includes bear patterns, interviews with teddy bear artists, and more. Also in French.

July 19 – National Ice Cream Day

 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StrawberryIce.jpg

Ice Cream:  Selected Internet Resources

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/selected-internet/icecream.html

Small collection of annotated links to websites about ice cream, covering history, safety of homemade ice cream, photos, scientific aspects, and ice cream sundaes. Includes historical photos. From the Science Reference Section, Library of Congress.

Ice Cream

http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu/icecream.html

Information on ice cream history, production, consumption, ingredients, manufacture, flavors, and more. From the Department of Food Science, University of Guelph, Canad

From ipL2 blog, The Link

 YouTube always has had a way with pranks. Some time in the last hour, the world’s largest video portal activated a new button on some videos that looks like a tiny soccer ball. Clicking it will activate an endless, incredibly annoying sound that sounds vaguely like a swarm of insects. Or, for anyone who has been watching the World Cup, like the dreaded Vuvuzela...

 

FromTechcrunch

http://sonic.net/~erisw/bdlibgallery.html

1. How to have a happy Christmas

2. What's the best type of chocolate?

3. When gifts go wrong

4. Don't give money!

5. It's all about the giving

6. What do your decorations say about you?

7. The smell of Christmas

8. Good food is mostly in the mind

9. Hallucinating

10. Searching for the Christmas spirit

11. Bad jokes

12. Santa Claus

 

From Psyblog

A call centre company with offices around KZN  has had it with Telkom's slow data transmission and line instability. They are using another medium of data transfer, a carrier pigeon, called Winston. Winston will take under an hour to fly to Durban, from Howick, I think it is. He will have an sd card attached to his person, and though not a match for Superman, he will be speedier than Telkom.

Now, there is an abundant supply of pigeons on campus, UCT could be a provider of Winstons to the market.  And, from the frailty of G-wise, the Winstons could  save us!

With acknowledgements to Des and Dawn Lindberg, and the Vikings.

Freudalina