The Bull in Full

State of Confusion

At work, running low on sleep, and not having blogged in a while, this post at Barry's got me thinking:

By the way, Wichita KS is in Sedgewick County, not Wichita County, which can be confusing, at the least.

For all the talk about merging city and county governments here (which I continue to think is a ridiculous idea -- hopefully more on that soon in my primary election post), one reason it actually could work is that the city of Durham, NC is actually in Durham County, NC.  Oddly enough, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule in NC.  This is an attempt to come up with all of the oddly mismatched city/county names in the state.  I'm sure I'm going to miss an awful lot. 

I've listed the cities and the counties they're in, along with the counties and their county seats.

Asheville -- Buncombe County
Asheboro -- Randolph County
Ashe County -- Jefferson

Alexander -- Buncombe County
Alexander County -- Taylorsville

Graham -- Alamance County
Graham County -- Robbinsville

Greensboro -- Guilford County
Greenville -- Pitt County
Greene County -- Snow Hill
Pittsboro -- Chatham County

Beaufort -- Carteret County
Beaufort County -- Washington
Washington County -- Plymouth

Henderson, NC -- Vance County
Hendersonville, NC -- Henderson County

Franklin, NC -- Macon County
Franklin County -- Louisburg

Cherokee, NC -- Swain County
Cherokee County -- Murphy

Jacksonville, NC -- Onslow County
Jackson County -- Sylva

Waynesville, NC -- Haywood County
Wayne County -- Goldsboro

Yanceyville, NC -- Caswell County
Yancey County -- Burnsville

What have I missed?

Foolin'

So, in the absence of pulling any April Fools jokes myself, I'm trying to keep up with all the internet pranks that show up today instead.  Google's annual one is pretty good,  (Virgle, the new Google mission to colonize Mars) although in my opinion, it can't hold a candle to the sheer subtle brilliance that was Google Romance a couple years ago.  (I highly recommend that you take the tour.)  Usually DailyKos has a prank post of some sort on the front page, but at last check all the stories for today are pretty obviously real.  Homestar Runner seems to be sitting this year out too.

So, any good jokes out there today that I'm missing?

Update: Okay, I admit.  Sports Illustrated really had me for the majority of this, which is actually a flash-back to a story 25 years ago.  Absolutely exquisitely done -- I almost fell for it even today.  (More foolin' off the front page under the 168 MPH Fastball link.)

Unusual ideas for Feb. 14

Will the wonders of the internet never cease?  Random surfing today brought me today the knowledge that Roadside America, longtime publishers of wacky stuff that can be found on backroads across the country, has a website.  This can easily suck up hours of your time, so be careful, but for today, I'd like to share their suggestions on the best roadside locales for professing your love.  Among them:

... at a Recreation of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Couderay, WI: The Hideout: Capone's Retreat [12101 W County CC, 17 mi. E of Hayward]. The   main eight-car garage is now remodeled as a bar and restaurant. Guided tours   are given of the Gun Tower, Jail Cell, and the "Nationally recognized recreation of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre."

...on the plush carpet in the Infinity Room, House on the Rock, Spring Green, Wisconsin. True, the late owner Alex Jordan was a lifelong scamp of a bachelor. But the   narrow, glass-enclosed Infinity Room juts out over a cliff. Its disorienting   effect continues to benefit modern Casanovas...

Unrelated to certain silly holidays, some enterprising person with a camera really needs to get some shots of the muffler people at the corner of Pleasant Green and US 70, near Eno Fire Dept, and add them to RA's auto part art page.

Update: Behind on my blog reading today.  It's not on the side of the road, but as Kevin points out, inside a cardboard box is a pretty good answer too.

Olympic Drive, Saturday afternoon

BiF International News Update

Bull in Full News Corp (motto: We Report, You Deride) foreign correspondent Kathryn Bacon Goldman, on location in Uganda, sends in these important news happenings. 

From Australia:

Pet Camel Kills Australian Woman

. . .

The camel was just 10 months old but already weighed 152kg (336lbs) and had come close to suffocating the family's pet goat on a number of occasions.

On Saturday, the woman apparently became the object of the male camel's desire.

It knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her and displayed what the police delicately described as possible mating behaviour.

In the wake of this tragedy, it would likely be in bad taste to bring up that passage from Isaiah.

In other news, a Ugandan school suffered a different kind of crisis:

OVER 100 pupils of Sir Tito Winyi Primary School Kiziranfumbi sub-county in Hoima district became "hysterical" yesterday, forcing the school to close, in what the authorities described as a demonic attack.

. . .

Last year, four residents of the area, one of them a Congolese national, were arrested and charged in a Hoima court with casting a spell on the school. However, when the prosecution produced witnesses, court had to adjourn and magistrate George Obong and the prosecutors fled the courtroom after the pupils who were witnesses became hysterical again when they saw the suspects. The suspects reportedly have a land dispute with the school.

However, experts said the children could be facing mental challenges. "It could also be a form of mass hysteria where there is anxiety and bizarre behaviour," said Paul Nyende, a lecturer at Makerere University's department of mental health and community psychology.

"But it does not mean demons do not exist and the school may need to get services from religious exorcists. The pupils also need counselling because it is a traumatic experience."

Finally, our faithful correspondent sends us this additional note:

There is another one I can’t find online right now about a member of parliament threatening to take off his clothes if a certain land bill passes. No word on how good looking the said member is and if one would want to see the spectacle or not.. (taking off clothes is a traditional way of shaming people in Africa)

See if you get news like this from WRAL!

Mental Health Break: "All mimsy was mRNA..."

Carleton's Biology department had a bit of an odd tradition that I'm going to share today.  One of the introductory biology courses was called Energetics and Genetics, aka Bio 123.  Every term, perhaps somewhere about 1/3 of the way through, the word would go out quietly but swiftly among the upper class Biology majors and their friends: "Bio 123 movie is next Wednesday!"  When the day came, the biggest lecture hall on campus (that doubled as a movie theater on weekends) would fill with its normal comportment of bleary-eyed freshmen, but this time they would also be greeted with scores of snickering and whispering upper classmen along the back rows.  At which point Professor Zweifel would then announce that today we'd be watching an educational video on protein synthesis.

Through a distant train of thought (involving a computer virus), this video came to mind recently.  While in the 1990s this was something of a treasure of the Carleton Media Library, there was some worry that we had one of the few surviving copies, and that it was starting to break down.  In 2007, though, the obvious thought occurred to me: I'll bet that thing's on YouTube!

 

(I've embedded the video here, but you probably want to click through to the bigger version.)

What followed in those mornings in the Olin lecture hall was an educational movie made at Stanford in 1971.  The first minute offers you very few clues that this is anything other than an extremely dry presentation, with a professor standing in front of a blackboard with a protein model, looking like he couldn't be any more square no matter how hard he tried.  The only hints you get that something might be a bit unusual come from little phrases that go by, like "dance idiom" and "colored head balloon."  As the video lengthens, you start to get still shots of what's to come, but it isn't until after the 3 minute mark that the "Protein Jive Sutra" kicks in, followed shortly by the filked Jabberwocky, interpretive dancing to cellular processes, and, yes, the colored head balloons.

Amazingly enough, if you can get past the combination of shock and hilarity at what you're watching, this is actually a pretty good demonstration of the processes of protein synthesis.  But even if you haven't the remotest interest in the biochemistry here, this thing is worth watching for no other reason than seeing a man in a pink cape cavorting through seas of writhing, sunburnt Stanford students with a fire extinguisher representing GTP.

Ow! Ow! My head!

I get e-mail:

Attention NCSSM Alumni,

Be sure to come out tomorrow evening, Friday, November 16, to support the NCSSM Men's Varsity Soccer Team as they play in their first-ever NCHSAA 1-A State Championship against East Montgomery. The game is tomorrow evening at 5 o'clock at:

Durham Bulls Soccer Stadium
At WRAL Soccer Center
7700 Perry Creek Road
Raleigh, NC 27616-5704

Okay, let me get this straight.  There's a Durham Bulls Soccer Stadium.  In Raleigh.  In NORTHEAST Raleigh, a good 40 minute drive from Durham.

WHAT THE HELL?

Yes, I know.  Capital Broadcasting owns Durham Bulls and WRAL, so they're using this as a marketing opportunity.  But look at it again.

The naming rights to a stadium have been bought.  By another sports franchise.  IN A DIFFERENT SPORT THAT DOESN'T EVEN PLAY THERE!  INCLUDING THE NAME OF A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CITY!

On a remotely related note, WRAL-FM has now started playing Christmas music, earning them a nomination for the coveted Christmas Creep awards, joining 102.9 in that dubious distinction.  (More on the CC Awards soon.)

Oh, one more thing...

Secant tangent cosine sine!
3.14159!
Physics, Bio, Polymer Chem!
Give 'em hell, Go S&M!

Marketing the dive bar

I don't know much about Harrison's Bar and Grill in Cary, so I'm going to note this without much comment, except to say that sometimes when the world changes, the results can be kind of funny and surprising.

A radio ad I heard the other day for Harrison's took a moment out to reassure listeners that despite the fact that it had recently gone non-smoking, the bar retained it's "dive bar" atmosphere, so regulars need not worry.

Headline of the Day

Police: Fair worker watched porn, not chickens

If only all the news were this much fun to write...

How many journalists would have killed to get a crack at this story?  Best single sentence I've seen in a newspaper in years:

Bill Clinton's flight was the latest and most spectacular of a string of Triangle-area emu escapes that ended in death.

It just doesn't get any better than that...