⛳ Donald Trump’s most favorite golf ball is the Titleist Pro V1, made in Fairhaven, Mass.  Although Massachusetts is a blue state, this still counts as a win for Trump because, even after tariffs, Trump can now lose twice as many Titleists compared to foreign-made balls and still come out ahead.

Oh, did I say lose balls?  My error, Trump doesn’t lose balls.  As the Allman Brothers sang, you can’t lose what you never had.

🫅 Speaking of foreign trade, I didn’t know until now that the legendary folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” — published by Hans Christian Andersen in 1837 — most likely originated in 11th-century India.  So, if you’ve been thinking Trump’s “new clothes” look pretty old, you are spot-on by about a millennium.

🎓 Moving along, here is my first thermodynamics joke, at least on this site.  What is the difference between heat and money?  Answer: Heat flows from objects with more of it to those with less of it, whereas money…

Now you know everything you need to know about thermodynamics, and maybe money, without being either the world’s richest person or the world’s most thermodynamic one. (As always, I encourage you to follow my links.)

😈  The other day, I rather innocently searched Google for the term “deliver us from evil.”  (Actually, there was no rather about it as I was indeed totally innocent — but if I were not, should anyone believe such assurances?)  Anyway, Google returned 16 items related to the 2014 film of the same name before offering a link to the origin of the phrase: the so-called seventh petition in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:13).  Good ol’ Godless Google.

In any event, if people believe that praying to an invisible being will deliver us from evil… well, much like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I’d like to see placebo studies first.

😉 Here’s another joke, minus thermodynamics.  Why did the compulsive swearer drive to the hardware store?  Answer: To get his profane tank filled, dammit.

👓  It was 50-60 years ago, but I still smart at the years I was smart-shamed.  This is a term, which I only recently discovered, that neatly captures the mocking, isolation and put-downs by one’s schoolmates once they sense your intelligence and respond with their “negative admiration” forever after.  Young victims of smart-shaming don’t understand why they are being blamed for things they know and insights they have — which leads to hiding, pretending, under- or over-confidence, cynicism, withdrawal, or all the above.

It helps greatly when a smart-shaming victim has a supportive friend, who in my case was named Bill.  Bill didn’t take advanced subjects, but that was irrelevant — I never felt that Bill was less smart than me or that he saw me as smarter than him.  I can’t remember the subject ever coming up.  Although our paths diverged after college, I carried with me the support of his unconditional friendship for decades.  A much-belated thank you, Bill.

🎓 I once assumed that smart-shaming was a Baby-Boomer relic, a tribal behavior like  William Golding depicted in Lord of the Flies, i.e., muscle guys vs. weak nerds, and that the practice had finally succumbed to bully-outing.  But I was surprised and discouraged to learn that smart-shaming is endemic among Filipinos, in ways which echo the attitudes in MAGA America.  Feel free to leave the site and explore that informative link.

🪙 This digital collage (below) started out as a way to make a lame noncentsical pun, but it turned into a re-appreciation for the Indian Head/Buffalo nickel (1913-1938), one of the two most elegant U.S. coins.  (The other is the art-nouveau Walking Liberty half-dollar).  

Both faces of the Indian Head/Buffalo nickel were designed by James E. Fraser, probably best-known for his sculpture “End of the Trail.”  Unfortunately, this nickel was prone to wear — as you knew if you were lucky enough to find one and tried to read the date — and the design was replaced in 1938.

A painting of Fraser’s “End of the Trail” sculpture was used as the cover image for the 1971 Beach Boys album “Surf’s Up” which was one of our college favorites.

🌎 Here’s a geography quiz just for my spouse.  (She loves geography more than life itself, and if you don’t believe me, just ask her — here are her contact details.)  Say you want to fly from the largest city north of the Arctic Circle to the largest city south of the Antarctic Circle.  To the nearest 1,000, how many air-miles will you earn?

Answer:  You will earn zero miles, as there are no permanent human settlements south of the Antarctic Circle.  So get ready for a very long wait for your departing flight from the Murmansk (Russia) Airport.

Alternate Answer:  Okay, that was a bit unfair.  The southernmost airport in the world happens to be the Guardia Marina Zañartu Airport, which may sound like an imaginary location from Mission Impossible but is actually on the southern tip of Chile, 943 miles north of the Antarctic Circle.

🎁 “The President and the First Lady strongly encourage all Americans to consider sending contributions to their favorite charities in lieu of gifts to the First Family.”

Oh, sorry, that was the Obama administration gift policy.

I just sent a note to whitehouse.gov about the Trump administration’s current gift policy, because I couldn’t find one online.   If I hear back, I will be sure to let y’all know.