Silly Old Bear
Psychological diagnoses of inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood, according to an article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2000:
- Winnie-the-Pooh: ADHD, inattentive subtype; OCD (provisional diagnosis); borderline intellectual functioning (Very Little Brain)
- Piglet: Generalized anxiety disorder
- Eeyore: Dysthymic disorder
- Rabbit: Narcissistic personality disorder
- Owl: Reading disorder
- Tigger: ADHD, hyperactivity-impulsivity subtype
“Pooh needs intervention,” the authors conclude. “We feel drugs are in order. We cannot but wonder how much richer Pooh’s life might be were he to have a trial of low-dose stimulant medication. With the right supports, including methylphenidate, Pooh might be fitter and more functional and perhaps produce (and remember) more poems.”
Cooped Up
Mike Tyson collects pigeons.
Rimshot
Two racehorses and a dog are in the stable on the night before the big race.
The old horse says, “Kid, I have a favor to ask. Tomorrow’s the last race of my career. If I win, they’ll have a big parade in my honor and put me in a nice pasture for the rest of my life. If I lose, they’ll send me to the glue factory. Now, I’m still a pretty good racer, but I think we both know that if you try tomorrow, you can beat me. So I’m asking you, just this once … will you let me win?”
The younger racehorse looks at the ground for a long time. “I understand what you’re asking,” he says, “and I feel for you, I really do. But look at this from my point of view. I’ve never lost a race. If I keep up my record, there’s no telling how far I’ll go. And, no offense, but if I lose this early in my career to a horse as old as you, I could never recover. I’m really sorry, but I just can’t do it.”
The dog says, “Are you out of your mind? You’ve said yourself that you already have a great record, and he’s asking you to come in second, in one race, to save his life. How can you refuse that? Have you no soul at all?”
The young horse looks at the old horse and says, “Look — a dog that can talk!”
High-Rent Districts
World’s most expensive cities, according to a worldwide 2006 cost of living survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting:
- Moscow
- Seoul
- Tokyo
- Hong Kong
- London
- Osaka
- Geneva
- Copenhagen
- Zurich
- Oslo
New York was number 11.
Brain Food
Tom’s Restaurant, famous as the diner in Seinfeld, shares a building with the Goddard Institute of Space Studies in Manhattan.
(Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Daddy!
In 1928, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia received an old automaton of ingenious design and unknown origin. Activated by springs and guided by a series of cams, the mechanical figure could draw seven different pictures and write verses in both French and English.
Who devised such an elegant machine? That remained a riddle until restorers repaired it. Then the mechanical man penned the words “Written by the automaton made by Maillardet,” a reference to Swiss mechanician Henri Maillardet. Unbelievably, he had built the machine more than 120 years earlier, in 1805 — and receives credit today only because he had taught the machine his name.
“Bulwell Is Considered a Good Writer”
Excerpts from 19th-century students’ English exams:
- “Lord Byron was the son of an heiress and a drunken man.”
- “Gibbon wrote a history of his travels in Italy. This was original.”
- “George Eliot left a wife and children who mourned greatly for his genius.”
- “George Eliot Miss Mary Evans Mrs. Cross Mrs. Lewis was the greatest female poet unless George Sands is made an exception of.”
- “Sir Walter Scott Charles Bronte Alfred the Great and Johnson were the first great novelists.”
- “Thomas Babington Makorlay graduated at Harvard and then studied law, he was raised to the peerage as baron in 1557 and died in 1776.”
- “Homer’s writings are Homer’s Essays Virgil the Aenid and Paradise lost some people say that these poems were not written by Homer but by another man of the same name.”
- “A sort of sadness kind of shone in Bryant’s poems.”
- “Holmes is a very profligate and amusing writer.”
– From Mark Twain, “English as She Is Taught: Being Genuine Answers to Examination Questions in Our Public Schools,” 1887
Think Again
Chocolate is toxic to cats, dogs, parrots, and horses.
The “Flaming Rainbow”
When sunlight is refracted through ice crystals in cirrus clouds, it sometimes produces this rare phenomenon, known as a circumhorizontal arc.
It happens only when the sun is high in the sky, so there’s no pot of gold.
(Thanks, Mysticwolf.)
Overtoun Bridge
Since the 1970s, scores of dogs have leaped from Scotland’s Overtoun Estate bridge, west of Glasgow.
The 60-foot fall kills most of them. Those that survive often try again.
No one knows why.
