Another All This Is That List: A few things you didn't know about the President of the United States

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John Quincy Adams, our 6th President, often skinny-dipped in the Potomac River on summer mornings. [See All This Is That: POTUS 6: President John Quincy Adams - First Son Of A President To Become President And The First President To Become A Congressman Post-White House]

William Henry Harrison was inaugurated on an extremely cold day and "caught a cold that developed into pneumonia" [ed's note: hmmmm...we know now that cold weather neither causes colds or pneumonia]. He died exactly one month after becoming the 9th President. [See Jack's portrait and biography of Harrison here: 166 Years Ago Today, William Henry Harrison Became The Fastest President Ever.]

John Tyler, POTUS No. 10, fathered 15 children with two wives. Number 15 arrived when he was 70. [See Jack's portrait and bio of Tyler here: POTUS 10: Pres. John Tyler - The First Accidental President]

The 11th president of the United States James Polk survived a gall bladder surgery when he was 17. The only anaesthetic was brandy. [See All This Is That: POTUS 11: Pres. James Polk - The Man With The Mullet]

Lanky Link a/k/a Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President, often carried letters, bills, and notes in his stovepipe hat. [See All This Is That: POTUS 16: Pres. Abraham Lincoln - The Most Beloved President?]

The 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson never went to school. Ever. His wife, Eliza McCardle, taught him to write when he was 17. [See All This Is That: POTUS 17: Pres. Andrew Johnson - The Worst President Ever]

James Garfield was ambidextrous and multilingual. The 20th president of the United States could write--[ed's note: is this cool, or what?] at the same time--Greek with one hand and Latin with the other. [See All This Is That: POTUS 20: Pres. James Garfield]

The ubiquitous toy, the teddy bear, arose from 26th U.S. president Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a bear with her cub on a hunting trip in Mississippi. [See All This Is That: POTUS 26: President Theodore Roosevelt - The Roughrider]

32nd president of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt was related, either by blood or by marriage, to 11 former presidents. [See All This Is That: POTUS 32: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt - The Man In The Wheelchair Who Lifted The Country On His Shoulders; The Only POTUS To Win Four Terms]

The letter "S" in the 33rd president's name, is just that. His middle name is S. Harry S. Truman's middle name came from two of his grandfathers, whose names both had "S" in them. [See All This Is That: POTUS 33: President Harry Truman - "The Buck Stops Here"]

Military leader and 34th president of the U.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower loved to cook; he developed a recipe for vegetable soup that is 894 words long and includes the stems of nasturtium flowers as one of the ingredients. See, separate post today, that includes his recipe. [For more detail on President Eisenhower, see All This Is That: POTUS 34: Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower - A Most Detached President]

40th president of the United States Ronald Reagan broke the so-called "20-year curse," in which every president elected in a year ending in 0 died in office. Ronald Reagan broke the curse, and George Bush looks like he will carry on the tradition! [See All This Is That: POTUS 40: Pres. Ronald "Dutch" Reagan - B Movie Actor To President]

George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, and his wife Laura were married three months after meeting each other. [See All This Is That: POTUS 43: Pres. George W. Bush - One Of The Nearly 5% Of Presidents Who Are Sons Of Presidents]
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Obama settles on Joe Biden for his Vice-President

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

Senator Barack Obama is ready to announce a running mate, according to an article by Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny in the New York Times/International Herald Tribune.

Barack Obama has settled on his choice for a running mate and set the stage for a multi-pronged, multimedia rollout that begins with a crack of dawn alert to supporterss via a wide-spread text message to be transmitted to cell phones and Blackberries around the country.



The article said "Aides said perhaps a half-dozen advisers were involved in the final discussions in an effort to enforce a command that Obama issued to staff members: that his decision not leak out until supporters are notified."

The Senator has focused in recent days on two Senators and a Governor: Senator Evan Bayh (IN), Governor Tim Kaine (VA) and Senator Joseph Biden Jr. (DE). Falling off the list were Hillary Clinton (on the list because "She'd be on anyone's short list"), Governor Bill Richardson (I how Richardson ended up in the doghouse? and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who has been a very strong contender, but in the end her selection would only have riled up the pro-Hillary faction of the party, in addition to being virtually unknown in the rest of the country (not unlike Governor Kaine).

The Obama machine may be virtually leak-proof, but I hold in my hands an email sent to us through a circuit of anonymous internet remailers. The email was originally sent from an Apple Macintosh at a Kinkos in McLean, Virginia and includes just enough detail to leave no doubt about its veracity. The email informs us that Barack Obama has selected fellow congressman, Senator Joe Biden as his running mate.

And if you doubt our veracity, you'll just have to wait until Wednesday morning, when Barack Obama unveils his choice. For our part, it's a great choice. It will be most interesting to watch Obama attempt to keep the ebullient, gregarious and oh-so-talkative Joe Biden in check. With Obama increasingly under fire from the Republicans on defense matters, and not making any headway in the national polls, he had no choice but to select Biden. Biden presided over two of the most fractious Supreme Court nominations ever (Clarence Thomas, and the Robert Bork fiasco), in addition to being a prominent, active, and thoughtful member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

We know Senator Biden will accept the post. He said so in a June 22, 2008 interview on NBC's Meet the Press.
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Video: Be a game tester!

And now, cut to the commercial...


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Japanese African-American Slang Dictionary

Randall C. Miller, Jr. has published a book of African-American slang for the Japanese audience. Here are some of the more family-friendly of the pages in the book:

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Could you pass the Acid Test at Google or Microsoft?

Over the years, I've known dozens of people who've interviewed at Microsoft, and who have been asked all sorts of insane questions in their interviews. In interviews, I have often found the simplest questions were the best, like "What is the last book you read, and when was that?" When is almost always instructive. The answer ranges from "on the bus coming here," to "7th grade."

The Pingdom website came up with this compilation of questions:

Questions by Google

How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

Describe a chicken using a programming language.

Questions by Microsoft

You have a bucket of jelly beans. Some are red, some are blue, and some green. With your eyes closed, pick out 2 of a like color. How many do you have to grab to be sure you have 2 of the same?

Pairs of primes separated by a single number are called prime pairs. Examples are 17 and 19.

Prove that the number between a prime pair is always divisible by 6 (assuming both numbers in the pair are greater than 6). Now prove that there are no ‘prime triples.’

Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o’clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs?

How much does a 747 weigh?

Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?
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The Star Trek Red Shirts

This image is from the wired blog...artist unknown

If you accompanied Captain Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy down to an alien planet and you wore a red shirt, the chances are you would not be beaming up.

Matt Bailey of SiteLogic analyzed the numbers and found 13.7% of Kirk's crew died during their three-year televised mission, and that 73% of those deaths were Red Shirts.

Here is someone's YouTube homage to the red-shirts.

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John Edwards experienced a Penile Zipper Injury in his rush to escape the Beverly Hilton Hotel

By Pablo Fanque,

All This Is That National Affairs Editor

I wrote an article a couple of days ago, in which I stated that All This Is That had published its last article on Ex-Senator John Edwards. I should have said "next to last."

How was I to know that I would be in the Formosa Cafe in Hollywood the next day, striking up a conversation with a young woman who turned out to be an intern at Cedars Sinai Medical Center (near Beverly Hills and West Hollywood)? Or that she had treated, along with a resident, a man named "Jack Olson" who was in fact John Edwards? And that she would treat him for a trauma that most often occurs in young boys?

You may snigger, but in fact, Ex-Senator Edwards experienced a common emergency room complaint about which dozens of articles have been published in medical journals. Look here. Or here.

As it turns out, my intern friend, Jenny, treated the Ex-Senator for a Penile Zipper Injury. She only understood what actually happened after the National Enquirer broke the story wide open. The Senator was in a hurry to zip up and hightail it out of the Beverly Hilton Hotel when he experienced a most painful misfire. The injury did not require catgut sutures, but did necessitate application of an ointment and dressing to the former Senator's tallywhacker. John Edwards was zipping up quickly as he realized the hotel was crawling with reporters and photographers.

"Jack Olson" and Rielle "Baby Mama" Hunter

The zipper injury John Edwards incurred has thus far not been mentioned in the press. Until today.
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analog+ digital painting: Map of New New Amsterdam

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McBush

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I can't figure out who did the original photoshop job, but I like it.
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Get Together Music Video by the Youngbloods (with Stephen Stills and Jackson Brown)

Here's a vid of the great 69ish Get Together by The Youngbloods. I went to a few rock festivals, and the best by far was the Sky River Rock Festival, where I saw the Youngbloods, Wishbone Ash, Delaney and Bonnie (w/ Eric Clapton as a guitar sideman), Jimmy Witherspoon (I remember vividly his smoldering "Soledad"), and The Buoys. This really is a tired hippie anthem, but I still have a soft spot for it. I've never heard a better version than the one they released as a single.


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A family affair? John McCain will not likely suffer the slings and arrows that now plague Ex-Senator John Edwards

John McCain will not likely suffer the slings and arrows that now plague Ex-Senator John Edwards. He had his own "affair" blow up last year, on the front page of the New York Times, and hundreds of other websites and blogs. But his wife stood steadfast. And how could she not?

Cindy McCain is John McCain's second wife. They were married in 1980. He admits to having an affair with her while he was married to his first wife, Carol. How angry can Cindy McCain really be when he husband steps out? No harm, no foul. John Edwards, on the other hand, had hell to pay at home. . .the same kind of hell that Elliott Spitzer, Mark Foley, and Larry Craig had to undergo.

I am pretty sure the next big political sex scandal will involve both partners: isn't it time we had a really good scandal with swingers (a/k/a "wife-swappers")? There has to be someone running who was involved in a key party or hot tub orgy somewhere, somehow. . .


The other other woman, Vicki Iseman
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Jack Brummet Poem: Survival

1
Around and within you—
The cunning enemy
Calculates your fall,

And a traitor within
Beats in your chest.
Know when to stand and when to run.

2
You gather your friends
Around you
Like a shock of wheat,

Like a bulwark
Or a last ditch bivouac
In the cold rain and snow.
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