Order (ring theory)

Order (ring theory) is another math concept that makes no sense to almost every human being on this planet. That's weird to think about.

I mean, click that link and read the article. It says things like: "In less formal terms, additively should be a free abelian group generated by a basis for R over ."

It's weird that some people's brains understand that. On the other hand, even chickens have brains. It's true. You can eat them.


I don't really like onion rings.
Photo: sanctumsolitude via Flickr (CC)

History of programming languages

History of programming languages is interesting. I recommend clicking the link to read about it. They say you can trace the history of programming languages back to 1801, when the Jacquard loom punched holes in cards to represent sewing loom arm movements in order to make decorative patterns automatically.

I love the word loom.

It's so soft.


This is a photo of two books about the C programming language.
Photo: mrbill via Flickr (CC)

John Neihardt

John Neihardt was an American author, poet, philosopher and amateur historian and ethnographer. He was born in 1881 and died in 1973. His life, and his works, were centered on life on the Great Plains.

My life, and my works, are centered on random dumb things that no one cares about.


Plains don't get any greater.
Photo: jimmywayne via Flickr (CC)

Whitley, Coventry

Whitley, Coventry is a suburb of Coventry in England. It looks like a nice place.

Whitley was the name of a character in A Different World, a spinoff of the Cosby Show. Whitley was harsh, yet fair. Pretty, yet tough. She had a southern accent.

Whitley was played by Jasmine Guy. I always liked Jasmine Guy. Maybe I still do, I don't know. I haven't seen her in a while. I like the last name Guy. I also like the first name Guy.

There have been many TV spinoffs. Laverne and Shirley was a spinoff of Happy Days. Empty Nest was a spinoff of The Golden Girls. Frasier was a spinoff of Cheers. I love spinoffs. They make me feel like the TV world is real. Kind of like my life.

Or is it...?


The little girl doesn't know what to think of Jasmine Guy.
Photo: obfusciatrist via Flickr (CC)

Jade Warrior (album)

Jade Warrior (album) was released in 1971 as one of the earlier albums of the psychedelic progressive rock movement. It is the first Wikibloogia in four days that is not directly related to Japan. Though, the album cover is Asian-themed, with Asian writing, and Asian-style mountains and sailboat, so I'm not out of the woods yet.

Jade Warrior was also the name of the band. Jade is a stone. I think it's green.


Jade animals.
Photo: markb120 via Flickr (CC)

Sanshō (sumo)

Sanshō (sumo) are the three prizes awarded to top division sumo wrestlers at a sumo tournament.

What is going on here? The last three Wikibloogia articles have been about Japan. What are the chances? Of the millions of articles on Wikipedia, I happen to click to three in a row about Japan? What is the universe trying to tell me? If tomorrow's Wikibloogia article is about Japan, I will have no choice but to have Japanese food for lunch.


Actually, I'm not very hungry.
Photo: hitthatswitch via Flickr (CC)

Kofun

Kofun are megalithic tombs in Japan. This is the second Japan-related Wikibloogia in a row. Something must be trying to tell me something. Something about Japan. Maybe I should have Japanese food for lunch today. I almost always enjoy Japanese food.

Tombs are places where people bury other people after they die. Then the ground eats them. The ground much prefers eating dead people to eating living people. In fact, even on the rare occasion where a man is buried alive, the ground always waits until after he is dead before eating him.


This is what happens when you die.
Photo: h.koppdelaney via Flickr (CC)

Mount Ōfuna

Mount Ōfuna is a mountain in Japan. It is 653.1 meters high. There's a small shrine on the top for monks. A long time ago, there was a Buddhist temple near the top, but it's not there anymore.

I like walking to the tops of mountains. Being at the top of a mountain makes you feel closer to the grand powers of the universe. And closer to the sky.

And closer to yourself. Being at the top of a mountain makes you feel closer to yourself. After all, when you really think about it, we are all mountains. We are all mountains in Japan.


Ants have mountains in Japan too.
Photo: mhaithaca via Flickr (CC)

Ulmus glabra 'Nana'

Ulmus glabra 'Nana' is a very slow growing shrub. Those are Wikipedia's exact words. I love that description. I don't know why, but I do.

I also really like the nickname Nana for a plant. I think this is my new favorite plant. I guess it's my only favorite plant. I have always liked plants, but I've never had a favorite. Until now. Now Ulmus glabra 'Nana' is my favorite plant. Thanks, Wikibloogia.


You look pretty today, Nana.
Photo: pluralzed via Flickr (CC)

Leeann Tingley

Leeann Tingley is a beauty queen from Rhode Island who has competed in the Miss USA pageant. She was Miss Rhode Island USA in 2006. She's very pretty and enjoys endurance training, skiing, drawing, photography, running, field hockey and golf.

She and I both like drawing.


Rhode Island has a center dedicated entirely to welcoming.
Photo: taberandrew via Flickr (CC)

Barbara Mallory Caraway

Barbara Mallory Caraway is a member of the Texas House of Representatives. It's hard to say her name five times fast. The Wikipedia article made me chuckle a few times, because every time it says her name it calls her Representative Mallory Caraway.

Tongue twisters are fun. There are many of them. Like "Unique New York". Or "She sells seashells by the seashore." Wait a second. Why would anyone buy seashells from a girl by the seashore? There are literally millions of shells on the seashore, all free for the taking. She should go far away from the seashore to sell her seashells.


Most of Texas's state representatives are actually laptop computers.
Photo: Mr. Wright via Flickr (CC)

Leeds Equity Partners

Leeds Equity Partners is a private equity firm that focuses on education, training and information and business services industries.

I don't really know what an equity firm is. I know that I should. And I kind of know. Like I have an idea. But I don't really know. I can never really wrap my head around words like 'equity' and 'capital gains' and 'bond'. I am good at wrapping my head around other kinds of words like 'giraffe' and 'table' and 'cheeseburger'.

Thankfully, we have the people at Leeds Equity Partners to help me with my equity.


Oh, it's a shoe company.
Photo: Djinn76 via Flickr (CC)

Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania

Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania is a borough northeast of Pittsburgh. Reynoldsville is in a soft coal region. In the past it had many mills and a macaroni factory.

I like factories that sound like they are the setting for a children's book. A macaroni factory is one example. Other examples include a dough factory, a button factory, and a molasses factory. I know factories like this exist in the real world, in the adult world, but mostly they sound like children's books.

Also, I like macaroni. Especially spirals. Kraft spirals. Those shits are so good.


I want to live inside this macaroni.
Photo: Brenderous via Flickr (CC)

The Dear Hunter

The Dear Hunter is a band (not to be confused with the movie The Deer Hunter). The band originated as a side project for a musician named Casey Crescenzo when he was a member of another band called The Receiving End of Sirens.

Sometimes I wish the cast of The Deer Hunter would form a band. Robert Deniro would play guitar. Christopher Walken on vocals. That other guy on drums. Meryl Streep on bass.


Like many, she found The Deer Hunter hard to watch.
Photo: Eric Bégin via Flickr (CC)

Paige Summers

Paige Summers was an adult model and a former Penthouse Pet of the Month and Pet of the Year. Sadly, she died in 2003 of a drug overdose.

Paige's real name was Nancy Ann Coursey. That's not as sexy as Paige Summers. It's interesting how some names are just naturally sexier than others. My name is Adam Shonkoff. Not sexy.


Penthouse club. Penthouse club. Penthouse club.
Photo: Thomas Hawk via Flickr (CC)

Jacques Villeneuve

Jacques Villeneuve is a Canadian racecar driver. Racecar is a palindrome.

Another palindrome is 'Madam I'm Adam'. This one was taught to me at an early age, because my name is Adam, so the person who taught it to me thought I would especially relate to it. She was right, I did.

Some people like another famous palindrome 'Rats live on no evil star'. I guess it is a palindrome, but the sentence never really made sense to me, so I never liked that one much. I feel the same way about 'A man, a plan, a canal, Panama'. That's not even a sentence.

I do like me some palindrome, though.


I like palindrome graffiti.
Photo: iwantamonkey via Flickr (CC)

Feedlot Alley

Feedlot Alley is the nickname of an area in Alberta, Canada, where more than 500,000 cattle and 180,000 hogs live. That's a lot of livestock.

Apparently, the area around Feedlot Alley has some of the highest rates of gastrointestinal illness in the entire province of Alberta. The theory is that the waste from such huge numbers of livestock contaminates the local water supply, making the humans in the area sick.

So here's how it breaks down:

The local humans sit down to eat bacon cheeseburgers washed down by tall glasses of water. Little do they know that their water is filled with microscopic bits of cow poo and pig pee. They innocently drink the water with the cow poo and pig pee, and they eat the ground cow topped with sliced pig. Then all that ground cow and sliced pig and cow poo and pig pee mixes up in the humans' stomachs, and about ten minutes later, all the humans go poo and pee it all back into a toilet. It's the circle of life.


She'll give you diarrhea without thinking twice.
Photo: ILIKEITSIMPLE via Flickr (CC)

Disused railway stations (Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway)

Disused railway stations (Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway) is a compilation of closed stations on a cross-country train line in England. There are 16 of these stations. Some of them have funny British names. Each has its own special history.

Railway stations are special places. People get on. People get off. People say goodbye. People say hello. People run away. People return home. People go to the bathroom. People read books. People take trains. People, take trains.

Take trains, people.

Much of the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton line is still intact.

Photo: Brianfit via Flickr (CC)

Out of Tune (band)

Out of Tune (band) is a Polish indie rock band. Their name is being ironic. At least I assume it is. I assume they are mostly in tune. Music that's out of tune is grating on the brain. No one really knows why. At least I don't think they do. There's something about human brains that was made to like certain combinations of rhythms and sounds, but not others.

There must be a purpose behind this, but hell if I know what it is. Hell if anyone does.


This man is out of tune.
Photo: Arty Smokes via Flickr (CC)

Split Mountain (Sierra Nevada)

Split Mountain (Sierra Nevada) is a 14,064-foot mountain in the Sierra Nevada range in California. It has twin summits. That's why people call it Split Mountain.

Sierra Nevada is also a beer. I don't really like it. But I do like beer in general.


Everything's blue and fake from the top of Split Mountain.
Photo: pellaea via Flickr (CC)

Jo-Ann Stores

Jo-Ann Stores is a retail chain that sells crafts and fabrics. It is based in Hudson, Ohio.

Wikipedia doesn't say who Jo-Ann is or was, but that's okay. I respect the store, because fabrics are important. Without them, nothing would be made out of anything.


Skin. The fabric of our lives.
Photo: angel_shark via Flickr (CC)

Louisiana House of Representatives

Louisiana House of Representatives is the Lower House in the Louisiana State Legislature. It convenes in Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge is the answer to a trivia question that Cindy Brady can't answer on the Brady Bunch when she is a contestant on a kids' game show and she panics and freezes and just looks at the red light on the camera and Marsha watching on TV back home says "Baton Rouge, Cindy. Baton Rouge."

I always think of that when I hear Baton Rouge.

What do you think of when you hear Baton Rouge?


The Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge looks like a big penis.
Photo: jimmywayne via Flickr (CC)

Rómulo Gallegos Center for Latin American Studies

Rómulo Gallegos Center for Latin American Studies is a foundation of the Venezuelan government whose purpose is to promote Latin American culture, especially the work of Rómulo Gallegos. Rómulo Gallegos was a Venezuelan novelist and politician.

No relation to former Oakland A's second baseman Mike Gallego.


Mike Gallego.
Photo: ztil301 via Flickr (CC)

Harold Furth

Harold Furth was an Austrian-American physicist. In the late 1960s he "contributed some important theoretical work on resistive magnetohydrodynamics instabilities in a slightly resistive plasma."

He sounds like a real asshole.


What a bunch of bullshit.
Photo: Marvin (PA) via Flickr (CC)

Plettenberg

Plettenberg is a town in Germany. Germany is a country in Europe. Europe is a continent on Earth. Earth is a planet in the Solar System. The Solar System is a group of bodies orbiting a star in the Milky Way galaxy. Milk is a beverage that comes from a breast. A breast is more delicious on some animals than on others. But that's all in the eye of the beholder. For example, I like chicken breast, but a lion prefers zebra breast. It's nonsense to say that one animal's breast inherently tastes better than another's.

And that brings us back to Plettenberg, a town in Germany. Life is a round-trip journey.


Plettenberg is one-way.
Photo: Uwe.Koch via Flickr (CC)

Stillicidium

Stillicidium is water dripping from the eaves of a building. Or maybe it was just the term for water dripping from the eaves of the Etruscan temple. I don't know, the article's weird and very short. So is Danny Devito.


Some of the finest stillicidium I've ever seen.
Photo: Chiot's Run via Flickr (CC)

Charles Gray (actor)

Charles Gray (actor) was an English actor. He played a villain in a James Bond movie and was the narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He went to school with Benny Hill. His name when he was born was Donald Marshall Gray, but he changed it. He first appeared on Broadway in 1961 in the musical Kean. His film breakthrough came in 1967 in the WWII murder mystery The Night of the Generals. Between 1968 and 1979, he was in more than 40 major film and television productions.

He died in 2000. Now he is made of ashes.


Close-up of Charles Gray's last name.
Photo: thodue via Flickr (CC)

Emma Carroll

Emma Carroll was the oldest person in Iowa for about nine months, starting on the day that 111-year-old Hazel Blecha died. Emma Carroll died on July 10, 2007 at the age of 112. She was quite wrinkly.

In 2004, at the age of 109, Emma became the oldest person to ride in a hot air balloon. It would have been more impressive if she'd become the oldest person to ride on a hang glider.


Everything wrinkles.
Photo: CirclesofLight via Flickr (CC)

Passive cooling

Passive cooling is technology that cools buildings without using power. It generally means the building doesn't use pumps or fans. Instead, other techniques are used to keep sun heat out and cold air in. Like orientating a building to take advantage of winter sun and avoid direct sunlight in the summer.

I am closer to a nerd than cool, but there are certain moments when I could be considered cool by some people. And I never use pumps or fans.


Passively cool.
Photo: salparadise666 via Flickr (CC)

Nathaniel Baldwin

Nathaniel Baldwin invented headphones. Isn't that weird? He invented headphones. I've never heard of him. What an important man. I wonder if he's related to Billy Baldwin.

Nathaniel Baldwin was also a supporter of the early Mormon fundamentalist movement.

I wonder if he invented headphones so he could listen to early Mormon fundamentalist musicians.


Mormon fundamentalists are allowed to have many headphones at the same time.
Photo: penmachine via Flickr (CC)

Nazir Jairazbhoy

Nazir Jairazbhoy was a professor of folk and classical music of South Asia at UCLA. Sadly, he died in June of 2009. But he was 82, so it's not as sad as it might be. Every man dies. Not every man really lives. William Wallace said that. Maybe not in real life, but he did in Braveheart.

I wonder if Nazir Jairazbhoy liked Braveheart.


Every man dies. Not every man poses for a photo with another man pretending to be William Wallace.
Photo: stuant63 via Flickr (CC)

Dublin University American Football Club

Dublin University American Football Club is an American football team at Trinity College In Dublin. It's a new team, established in 2008. They are the Thunderbolts.

Wikipedia says the Thunderbolts' head coach is Conor O'Shea, but I think Wikipedia actually had no idea who the head coach was so they just made up a stereotypically Irish-sounding name.


Thunderbolts are actually made out of lightning.
Photo: Paul Mayne via Flickr (CC)

Size functor

Size functor is some kind of math concept. The word 'functor' made me giggle.

This Wikipedia article is mind-bogglingly complicated. I think I have never read anything that made less sense to me in my life. It has more words I don't know than words I do.


It took decades, but finally his size functor was complete.
Photo: davidfullerdaniel via Flickr (CC)

Fermi's golden rule

Fermi's golden rule is a thing in quantum physics. Fermi was an Italian-American physicist who lived in the first half of the 20th century.

According to Wikipedia, Fermi's golden rule can be summed up like this:

"We consider the system to begin in an eigenstate of a given Hamiltonian H₀. We consider the effect of a (possibly time-dependent) perturbing Hamiltonian H'. If H' is time-independent, the system goes only into those states in the continuum that have the same energy as the initial state. If H' is oscillating as a function of time with an angular frequency ω, the transition is into states with energies that differ by from the energy of the initial state. In both cases, the one-to-many transition probability per unit of time from the state to a set of final states is given, to first order in the perturbation, by

where ρ is the density of final states (number of states per unit of energy) and is the matrix element (in bra-ket notation) of the perturbation H' between the final and initial states."

Jesus' golden rule was "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I like Jesus' better.


On the other hand, Jesus doesn't have a lab named after him.
Photo: Michael Kappel via Flickr (CC)

Matt Bahr

Matt Bahr was a kicker in the NFL. I remember him well from my youth.

I have a friend, who will remain nameless, whose name is Abby. In high school she was bored once and decided to add an 'h' to her name. From that point her name was Abbhy. Then after a little while I guess she decided she wasn't bored anymore, and she changed her name back to Abby. That's what she's called now.

I wonder if Matt Bahr was once a bored adolescent named Matt Bar.


Two uprights and a crossbahr.
Photo: DRB62 via Flickr (CC)

USS Thomas Freeborn (1861)

USS Thomas Freeborn (1861) was a steamship acquired by the Union Navy in the Civil War. Steamships run by the power of steam. That's amazing to me. Modern technology is incredible.

Wikipedia doesn't say if Thomas Freeborn was a real man. But I like the name Freeborn. I like when last names are two other words combined. Like Millard Fillmore. Or Paul Newman.


And just like that, his wife turned into a cloud of steam.
Photo: smays via Flickr (CC)

Karen Schwarz

Karen Schwarz represented Peru in the Miss Universe 2009 competition. She's pretty.

Her full name is Karen Susana Schwarz Espinoza. She is of German origin. She won the Miss Perú Universo 2009 title. I'm happy for her.


Incredibly, the best women in the entire universe are earthlings.
Photo: stevendamron via Flickr (CC)

Mohamed Bennouna

Mohamed Bennouna is a Moroccan diplomat and jurist. His Wikipedia article is his resume. He's had a bunch of impressive jobs and written some impressive pieces of writing. I'd hire him.


I'd hire him too.
Photo: hanzabean via Flickr (CC)

Worm-eating Warbler

Worm-eating Warbler is a warbler that eats worms. A warbler is a kind of bird.

Remember the book How to Eat Fried Worms? I do. It wasn't about warblers, it was about people.

I don't remember what it was about, but I do remember it being good. I imagine I'll say the same thing about my life someday when I'm old.


After eating a worm, he likes to sit by himself and warble.
Photo: Carly & Art via Flickr (CC)

Minuscule 475

Minuscule 475 is, I think, a parchment with the New Testament written on it, dated to the 11th century. They say it's beautifully written.

They say a lot of things.


Only eyes that are ready will see the words on this parchment.
Photo: Temari 09 via Flickr (CC)

Joy Williams (writer)

Joy Williams (writer) is a novelist. She has almost won a National Book Award for Fiction and a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was born in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

I like the name Joy. It makes me feel glad.


These people have joy.
Photo: rofanator via Flickr (CC)

Tipperary and Kilkenny hurling rivalry

Tipperary and Kilkenny hurling rivalry is such a weirdly specific Wikipedia article. Wikipedia's weird sometimes.

So am I.


People with narcolepsy shouldn't play hurling.
Photo: Steve Burt via Flickr (CC)