Amazed by Stupidity

There was a post on the Amarillo Globe-News Facebook page about a woman who had been bitten by a brown recluse spider while in the Amarillo Rick Husband airport. The article didn't so much question that the bite occurred, only wondering why it took five months for the UK Mail Online story to report it.

Personally, I believe it happened and don't know/don't care why it took so long to be reported. What bothered me was a couple of comments on the Facebook page by some doofus who took offense at the story.

I'm a friend of a person who knows the victim of the spider bite personally. It happened. Quit being a crappy news source.

First of all, I don't think the guy read the story: My spidey sense is all messed up. He seems a little too defensive about the way it was reported. The author of the article did some investigating and neither the city manager nor the manager of the airport knew anything about the incident.

Be that as it may, the guy who was overly defensive didn't construct a sentence very well. In the above quote, it sounds like he personally knew the spider bite. Now, I'm often guilty of fracturing grammar usage, so it would be hypocritical of me to criticize him for making a simple error in his sentence construction. No, what annoyed me about the guy was him commenting after several other comments and saying this:

You people amaze me with stupidity.

Dictionary.com defines amaze as:
1. to overwhelm with surprise or sudden wonder; astonish greatly.
2. Obsolete. to bewilder; perplex.

Why would stupidity "amaze" you? I can understand using "dismays", "surprises" or any other number of adjectives or verbs, but "amaze"? There's a LOT of stupidity in the world - why would you be amazed at it? Wouldn't that make you a little bit stupid yourself?

I'll admit I'm sometimes amazed at the sheer volume of stupidity...amazed that such stupid people somehow manage to get on the internet. What really amazes me is that there are 10,200,000 results on Google for "amaze me with stupidity". Hope that Google link works.

I'll feel really stupid if it doesn't.

Soylent Tofu

Earlier, I opened up my reader to find several hundred recipes from my foodgawker feed. Along with the other recipe sites I subscribe to, it's often overwhelming to sort through them all. I might not open every post, but I do like to scan the titles for interesting recipes and sometimes go to the website and save them. Far too often the most intriguing recipes are in another language and there's no translator widget on the page. Also, the ingredients are in metric measurements and it's just too much trouble to convert. It's much easier to just Google the recipe and find an English version.

Quickly looking over the titles, I stopped on one - I couldn't believe what I saw! I've always been slightly dyslexic and sometimes it makes for a confusing moment...and a few seconds later, a laugh out loud one.

I thought it said "Human Tofu"

(if you don't get the post title reference or haven't seen the movie: Soylent Green)

Even though I had heard of Hunan, a province of South-Central China, known for its three styles of cuisine, I didn't read it that way.

Here's the recipe that I misread.

Splitter

A fun but frustrating game.  Use the knife (click and drag) to create a chain reaction and get your smiley face (on the tether/joint) to the exit and collect stars along the way. You can split joints and wood objects only. You're not limited to just one knife cut, but each level has a different limit.

The first one is fairly easy, but they get harder as you get to the next levels. Thank goodness for restarts!

Splitter

Anything Goes - AC/DC

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As much as I like AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top", I think this song has overtaken it as my favorite AC/DC song.

Ever Clicked the Button?

The time button at the top of the page? If you click it, it will tell you how many milliseconds you've spent on the page as well as how many there have been since 1970. I don't know why the script's creator picked that particular date - maybe it was the day he/she was born, dunno. I tried to alter it once, but screwed it all up, so I just left it as it was.

According to both Blogger and Google site analytics, most visitors to this pathetic excuse for a blog stay less than a minute.

I can't say as I blame 'em.

Top 10 Unbreakable Sports Records

Last week, several sports talk shows were talking about the anniversary of Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game and saying it was a record that could never be broken. The subject then turned to other sports records that would forever remain. Several were brought up and some added to the mix while others were discarded as unlikely to be broken, but possibly could be.
This list hit my reader earlier this a.m. and I think it's probably the definitive list.

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Number 10 - Rocky Marciano's 49-0

Number 9 - Michael Schumacher's 7 championships

Number 8 - Ty Cobb's .366 career batting average

Number 7 - Nolan Ryan's 7 no-hitters

Number 6 - Wayne Gretzky's 215-point season

Number 5 - Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point night

Number 4 - John Wooden's 88 straight wins

Number 3 - Cy Young's 511 wins

Number 2 - Jerry Rice's 22,895 receiving yards

Number 1 - Cal Ripken's 2,632 consecutive games

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I'm not a racing fan, so I couldn't pontificate on Schumacher's record, but it does sound like it's the "weakest" of the ten. If I had to pick another that could possibly be broken, then perhaps Nolan Ryan's no hitter total might be. Jerry Rice's receiving total would be next in line, but I wouldn't bet on any of those three ever being broken. The rest will probably stand for all-time.

I did a little research and found other, similar lists and some lists that took the total even higher:

15 Unbreakable Sports Records

The 25 Most Unbreakable Records in Sports History

The 50 Most Unbreakable Records in American Sports