{"id":34656,"date":"2025-06-10T18:30:46","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T22:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=34656"},"modified":"2025-06-11T06:48:45","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T10:48:45","slug":"thoughts-large-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2025\/06\/thoughts-large-94\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts @ Large: 94"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u26f3 Donald Trump’s most favorite golf ball<\/a> is the Titleist Pro V1, made in Fairhaven, Mass<\/a>.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Oh, did I say lose balls<\/em>?\u00a0 My error, Trump doesn’t lose balls.\u00a0 As the Allman Brothers sang, you can’t lose what you never had<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udec5 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<\/a>.\u00a0 So, if you’ve been thinking Trump’s “new clothes” look pretty old, you are spot-on by about a millennium.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf93 Moving along, here is my first thermodynamics<\/a> joke, at least on this site.\u00a0 What is the difference between heat and money?\u00a0 <\/em>Answer: Heat flows from objects with more of it to those with less of it, whereas money…<\/p>\n

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

\ud83d\ude08\u00a0 The other day, I rather innocently searched Google for the term “deliver us from evil<\/em>.”\u00a0 (Actually, there was no rather<\/em> about it as I was indeed totally innocent — but if I were not<\/em>, should anyone believe such assurances?)\u00a0 Anyway, Google returned 16 items related to the 2014 film of the same name<\/a> before offering a link to the origin<\/a> of the phrase: the so-called seventh petition<\/a> in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:13).\u00a0 Good ol’ Godless Google.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> first.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude09 Here’s another joke, minus thermodynamics.\u00a0 Why did the compulsive swearer drive to the hardware store?<\/em>\u00a0 Answer: To get his profane tank filled, dammit.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc53\u00a0 It was 50-60 years ago, but I still smart at the years I was smart-shamed.\u00a0 This is a term, which I only recently discovered<\/a>, 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

It helps greatly when a smart-shaming victim has a supportive friend, who in my case was named Bill.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I can’t remember the subject ever coming up.\u00a0 Although our paths diverged after college, I carried with me the support of his unconditional friendship for decades.\u00a0 A much-belated thank you, Bill.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf93 I once assumed that smart-shaming was a Baby-Boomer relic, a tribal behavior like\u00a0 William Golding depicted in Lord of the Flies<\/a>, i.e., muscle guys vs. weak nerds, and that the practice had finally succumbed to bully-outing.\u00a0 But I was surprised and discouraged to learn that smart-shaming is endemic among Filipinos<\/a>, in ways which echo the attitudes in MAGA America.\u00a0 Feel free to leave the site and explore that informative link.<\/p>\n

\ud83e\ude99 This digital collage (below<\/a>) started out as a way to make a lame noncentsical<\/em> pun, but it turned into a re-appreciation for the Indian Head\/Buffalo nickel<\/a> (1913-1938), one of the two most elegant U.S. coins.\u00a0 (The other is the art-nouveau<\/a> Walking Liberty<\/a> half-dollar).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Both faces of the Indian Head\/Buffalo nickel were designed by James E. Fraser, probably best-known for his sculpture “End of the Trail.<\/a>”\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>” which was one of our college favorites.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf0e Here’s a geography quiz just for my spouse.\u00a0 (She loves geography more than life itself, and if you don’t believe me, just ask her — here are her contact details<\/a>.)\u00a0 Say you want to fly from the largest city north<\/em> of the Arctic Circle to the largest city south<\/em> of the Antarctic Circle.\u00a0 To the nearest 1,000, how many air-miles will you earn?<\/p>\n

Answer<\/em>:\u00a0 You will earn zero miles, as there are no permanent human settlements south of the Antarctic Circle.\u00a0 So get ready for a very long wait for your departing flight from the Murmansk (Russia) Airport<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Alternate Answer<\/em>:\u00a0 Okay, that was a bit unfair.\u00a0 The southernmost airport in the world happens to be the Guardia Marina Za\u00f1artu Airport<\/a>, which may sound like an imaginary location from Mission Impossible<\/em> but is actually on the southern tip of Chile, 943 miles north of the Antarctic Circle.<\/span><\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf81 “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.”<\/p>\n

Oh, sorry, that was the Obama<\/em><\/a> administration gift policy.<\/p>\n

I just sent a note to whitehouse.gov about the Trump administration’s current gift policy, because I couldn’t find one online.\u00a0 \u00a0If I hear back, I will be sure to let y’all know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u26f3 Donald Trump’s most favorite golf ball is the Titleist Pro V1, made in Fairhaven, Mass.\u00a0 Although Massachusetts is a blue state, this still counts as a win for Trump because, even after tariffs, Trump can now lose twice as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-at-large"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34656"}],"version-history":[{"count":107,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35164,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34656\/revisions\/35164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}