Why I Love 3 Quarks Daily; An Ode To Best-Of Episodes

Here are some items which I've liberated from one of my favorite websites, 3 Quarks Daily, in order to avoid having to come up with/find original stuff on my own. First up is an awesome table-turn on those damn African email scammers:

Scammer scammed

No doubt you are aware of what are known as "419" scams. Emails that begin with things like "I am the widow of the former President of Nigeria," and then promise you a fee of millions of dollars for arranging some transaction. [Read here about a woman who lost $400,000 to a Nigerian scammer!] There is also a whole cadre of devoted people who spend inordinate amounts of time and energy scamming the scammers back. This is a particularly hilarious account of one such scheme, where a man named Arthur Dent manages to convince the scammer to copy all of a Harry Potter book out in longhand and send the scanned pages to him. It is particularly gratifying to read the exchange as the scammer becomes more and more desperate.

Full email exchange is here.

Next up is a YouTube that compiles a few interviews with a guy back in early 2007 saying how a huge financial crisis is on the way... and he gets laughed at. Mostly by FOX commentators, but also by Ben Stein! Priceless. Wish I'd known about Peter Shiff and how smart he was way back then.

And now for a pretty messed up YouTube about how some scientists totally destroyed a city and murdered all of it's inhabitants for the purely selfish gain of really awesome knowledge. I'm not being tongue in cheek; I'm totally ambivalent about the terrible coolness of these sociopathic scientists.

It's like Ant Pompeii.

So okay I'm a bit YouTube heavy today, but this is the best thing ever, and by the best I mean dumbest: A video trying to ensnare potential investors to buy into the dumbest piece of fitness equipment of all time... A moving treadmill, so, you know, if you don't feel like really running, you can run on a treadmill, and then if you don't feel like running inside in place, you can run on a treadmill outside that moves. I wonder if this is the same company that invented powdered water. You know; just add water.

And finally, 50 Facts about Obama that you might not know:

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics

• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball

• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili

• His favorite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini

• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father

• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed

• He has read every Harry Potter book

• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali

• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream

• His favorite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars

• He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia

• He can speak Spanish

• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead

• His favorite drink is black forest berry iced tea

• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't

• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia

• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs

• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name

• His favorite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived

• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy

• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books

• His favorite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck

• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.

• His favorite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees

• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date

• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker

• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol

• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician

• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine

• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)

• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside

• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal

• His house in Chicago has four fire places

• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita

• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry

• He uses an Apple Mac laptop

• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300

• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits

• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes

• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)

• His favorite fictional television programs are Mash and The Wire

• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers

• He was nicknamed "Bar" by his late grandmother

• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds

• His favorite artist is Pablo Picasso

• His specialty as a cook is chili

• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins"

• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life

• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government

Comments

[Abbas Raza]

Hey, thanks for the compliment!

Thought you might enjoy this: http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/03/monday_musing_t.html

Best,

Abbas

[messiestobjects]

That was an awesome post! I can't believe you guys love R. Kelly too. Have you watched the 2nd installment on DVD yet? I think that R. Kelly became aware of the things people were saying about him, and decided to continue the series with more of his tongue in his cheek, sadly. It's still very much a roller coaster ride in Dr. R.K. Seuss's R&B funpark, but he lost some of that un-self-awareness that made the first one so new and exciting.

Thanks for stopping by!

[Gary]

Can Ben Stein just walk off a cliff already? That guy has proven himself to be one of the biggest dickbags going these days. Holy crap I can't stand his condescending, droning a-hole voice. He's just so wrong.

BUT in his defense (even though I truly cannot stand him):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/business/09every.html?_r=1&r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

"Next, here’s a lesson I learned in a 12-step program and should have learned better: avoid contempt prior to investigation. When the financial stock meltdown started, I was on a television show with Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital, who warned that Merrill Lynch could be in very bad shape. I glibly said that I thought that its problems were limited and that the stock was a buy. Mr. Schiff was completely right and I was wrong. I had no idea that Mother Merrill, where I have been a happy stockholder for years, had been turned into a such a wild house of high-stakes gambling. I apologize to Mr. Schiff for my dismissal of his views, which turned out to be far superior to mine in this area. (I could do without his acolytes sending me endless hate mail, though.)"

That treadmill thing is truly amazing - as Frank Zappa might say "from the country that brought you the Wacky Wall Walker!"

[messiestobjects]

Huh, who knew 'ol Ben had it in him to be magnanimous in defeat? Okay, I now respect him a little bit.

I know, that treadmill is amazing. It's like someone invented it and said: "BEHOLD! The American dream! The ultimate pinnacle in retarded consumer bait!"

My friend Scott and I used to laugh about that Water">http://www.waterjoe.com/&ei=9NkhSaWtLoSYeviZpMgG&sig2=CKltHddmzDGCOAUygzgBCg&usg=AFQjCNHRZpvAPgmu69rRJNrcEdsYh6ZYlg">Water Joe™ stuff, wondering how long it would be before they offered Caffeine-Free Water Joe™.

[Gary]

The ant city is frickin' cool.

I think this post has you caught up for at least a few weeks. ;)

[messiestobjects]

I know, right? 3 Quarks Daily is the coolest.