Category: Musings

Ponderings, reflections, thoughts, and other observations.

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Popeye Creator’s Birthday

I love Google doodles, really I do. Today, Google Canada presented one that is another childhood reminder. Today they celebrated E.C. Segar’s birthday, the creator of the Popeye comic strip character.

Here is the doodle:

… and here is a bit from wikipedia:

Evening American Managing editor William Curley thought Segar could succeed in New York, so he sent him to King Features Syndicate, where Segar worked for many years. He began by drawing Thimble Theatre for the New York Journal. The strip made its debut on December 19, 1919, featuring the characters Olive Oyl, Castor Oyl and Horace Hamgravy, whose name was quickly shortened in the strip to simply “Ham Gravy”. They were the strip’s leads for about a decade. In January 1929, when Castor Oyl needed a mariner to navigate his ship to Dice Island, Castor picked up an old salt down by the docks named Popeye. Popeye’s first line in the strip, upon being asked if he was a sailor, was “‘Ja think I’m a cowboy?” The character stole the show and became the permanent star. Some of the other notable characters Segar created include J. Wellington Wimpy and Eugene the Jeep.
Wikipedia

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ARPANET Versus Asterix

Today, October 29, marks an auspicious milestone for two very different items.

The first is the birthday of Asterix, a favorite comic book character that often reminds me of childhood trips to the library. Will they have a new one today?

Google Doodle for Asterix

It’s been 50 years … something I only found by way of the Google Doodle above on Google.ca this morning. Here’s an excerpt from a related article:

This month marks the 50th birthday of France’s most popular comic book. Back in October 1959, writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo had their first comic strip published in the magazine Pilote. The comic featured Asterix and Obelix, two inseparable and delightfully complementary characters from a small village in Brittany renowned for “sticking it to the man” by resisting Caesar’s colonial ambitions. Asterix and Obelix’s adventures did suffer from some ups and down along the way, most notably after Goscinny’s death in 1977, but their popularity never did fade: the comic books sold more than 325m copies worldwide and have been translated into 107 languages.
Jessica Reed at guardian.co.uk

The second, 40 years ago, is the “first message ever sent over the ARPANET” as described in a Wikipedia article. Here is an excerpt (follow the link below to read the complete article):

The first message ever sent over the ARPANET (sent over the first host-to-host connection) occurred at 10:30 PM on October 29, 1969. It was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline and supervised by UCLA Professor Leonard Kleinrock. The message was sent from the UCLA SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the SRI SDS 940 Host computer. The message itself was simply the word “login.” The “l” and the “o” transmitted without problem but then the system crashed. Hence, the first message on the ARPANET was “lo”. They were able to do the full login about an hour later.
Wikipedia

As much as I would expect the latter to be more important to Google, it would seem the former. Which is more important to you?

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Quotations

I have always been intrigued by quotes. I like to collect them. Quotes are my snippets of inspiration.

As a reader, you may find a particular quote I found interesting posted here. These quotes may be a collection of words that made me think, made me ponder their obvious meaning, or  perhaps a meaning that is not so obvious.

The written word can be ambiguous in comparison to the spoken word. Each can be quoted. Each can carry a tone or connotation built on the inflections found in the speaker’s voice. A voice that can jump off the page at you or ring clearly in your ears. One as powerful as the other.

What is your favorite quote?

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Why Reply

I believe one should be forthcoming with reasoned answers to respectful questions. Time may be of the essence, but that does not preclude appropriate communication.

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Ideals and Ideas

I found these quotes at essentially the same time and an interesting thought came to mind.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo

Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.
Paul Eldridge

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
Robertson Davies

The wisdom of a society is found in its ideals and its folly found in its ideas.

What are you willing to bring forward?

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The Four States of Knowledge

The four states of knowledge can be summed up with:

1) You know what you know.
2) You know what you don’t know.
3) You don’t know what you know.
4) You don’t know what you don’t know.

How often are you asked a question that falls into the fourth state of knowledge?