Your mileage may vary.

The TaxPoodle

Category: Curiosity

  • The Campaign Against Gravity

    The Campaign Against Gravity

    Most people, when they learn about gravity, accept it with the same weary resignation they have about taxes, traffic, and the continued existence of Garth Brooks. Roger Babson was different. He looked at gravity and thought: this is unacceptable. Roger Babson (left) was born in 1875; he was a wealthy American financier, statistician, businessman, and…

  • The Man on Page 602

    The Man on Page 602

    I’m planning on doing a post today about the Sears Catalog. You need to be a certain age to know what that is. If you were born after 1970, you might be asking “what is the Sears Catalog?” Some of you might even ask “what is Sears?” If that’s you, ask your parents. For the…

  • The Entirely Unnecessary History of Gaylord

    The Entirely Unnecessary History of Gaylord

    Ask any gay man born as part of Generation X (Gen X) or earlier and they will tell you of a name they were called. For some it was Fag. Others might have been saddled with Queer. For me it was Gaylord. There was a time when Gaylord was a perfectly respectable name. A dignified…

  • The Holes of Justice

    The Holes of Justice

    Today, we describe someone as “in the hole” if they are in debt, upside down on their mortgage, or more generally in dire circumstances, but in medieval Germany that might literally be a description of your day in court. Imagine receiving a court summons that reads: You are hereby ordered to appear before the court…

  • The man who almost destroyed the planet… twice

    The man who almost destroyed the planet… twice

    This is a cautionary tale. History is full of inventors who changed the world. Thomas Edison gave us the light bulb. Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone. The Wright brothers taught humanity that flying was not just for the birds. Then we have Thomas Midgley Jr.: environmental historian JR McNeill said of him that he may…

  • You probably don’t need to know this

    You probably don’t need to know this

    We have already established that as a young boy I was rubbish at sports. It wasn’t for lack of trying. My father, may he rest in peace, had me “try out” for everything, but when it came to a ball, I was simply no good at kicking one down a lawn, hitting one with a…

  • Then there’s this

    Then there’s this

    Think, thoughtful reader, about something you use everyday, that everybody uses everyday. If you are Taylor Swift, the Pope, or Vladimir Putin, you use it. Got a PhD in Physics or just completed your training on the deep fryer at McDonalds and are finally moving up from the drive-thru window – you use it. The…

  • The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist

    The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist

    It’s time for another of my “curiosity” posts. I have a confession to make: I really enjoy these. An esoteric question pops into my head, like why are there so many ways to say going to the toilet, or I come across some obscure fact like corn flakes were originally developed by John Harvey Kellogg…

  • Metonymy

    Metonymy

    I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and I spent my career in Hollywood. Both of those things are true, but they are not literal. I was born in Santa Monica, on the coast about 16 miles west of downtown Los Angeles, and raised in Glendale, a suburb of the city located about 10…

  • Money

    Money

    It’s time to answer one of those questions you didn’t know you had.  There are things we all say or do because we always have.  Call it growing up. Call it socialization.  Call it inculturation.  Some of them are practical:  don’t put baked beans on a paper plate at a picnic or you’ll soon be…