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Assorted links
1. A very long palindrome
2. Francisco Marroquin university in Guatemala
3. What percent of NBA athletes are broke five years after retirement? Sixty.
4. The Japanese put bar codes on tombstones. Guess why?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 7, 2008 at 07:25 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
That's not really a palindrome because it apparently contains non-English words, is grammatically incorrect (some of the words in the lists aren't nouns), and doesn't make any sentence. A palindrome should form a reasonable sentence.
Here is a better one:
Dammit I'm mad.
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I'm in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level "Mad Dog".
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I'm a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I'm it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I'd assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
"Sir, I deliver. I'm a dog"
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I'm mad.
Posted by: Andy at Jun 7, 2008 10:22:41 AM
I agree with the above; not that great a palindrome. There's a palindromic novel of over 30,000 words -- and if you only got halfway through before putting it down, you could technically figure out how it ends. :-)
Posted by: Kat at Jun 7, 2008 10:45:37 AM
A very long BOGUS palindrome - nothing clever about it.
Posted by: Mace at Jun 7, 2008 11:29:04 AM
Why didn't you link to this one,farther down the page? It's still super long but is clever and reminds me of James Joyce's gibberish.
Posted by: Noumenon at Jun 7, 2008 11:48:35 AM
Peter Norvig, on palindromes:
http://www.norvig.com/palindrome.html
Posted by: MattF at Jun 7, 2008 12:48:53 PM
One interesting question is why so few movie and TV celebrities go broke. I think one answer is because they mostly live in LA or NYC and thus have ridden the home inflation elevator. Even if they haven't worked in 10 years, they can sell the Beverly Hills house they bought in 1979 for $200,000 for 4 million and buy an Encino house for 2 million and live off that for awhile. Repeat until dead.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 7, 2008 2:32:35 PM
One interesting question is why so few movie and TV celebrities go broke. I think one answer is because they mostly live in LA or NYC and thus have ridden the home inflation elevator. Even if they haven't worked in 10 years, they can sell the Beverly Hills house they bought in 1979 for $200,000 for 4 million and buy an Encino house for 2 million and live off that for awhile. Repeat until dead.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jun 7, 2008 2:33:16 PM
The sixty percent figure is someone's best guess and isn't properly substantiated at all. That it sounds so sensational should raise alarm bells. I am surprised you've not been a bit more cautious in believing it.
Posted by: Tom at Jun 7, 2008 2:50:18 PM
An ex-Redskin quoted me the same stat for the NFL.
Posted by: Ted Craig at Jun 7, 2008 3:37:05 PM
One interesting question is why so few movie and TV celebrities go broke.
Their careers are longer?
Also, many of them took a long time to become successful, during which time they may have developed frugal habits.
As a secondary effect of this, they are likely to be older than athletes when they make their big money.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Jun 7, 2008 4:52:07 PM
Actors receive residuals for almost everything they were ever in. Michard Richards might never work again, but he'll never go broke with a check coming every month. Also, even when they're over the hill, they can still take minor gigs making Japanese commercials, infomercials, and such for decent money. Once athletes retire they need to find a whole new profession.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Jun 7, 2008 6:25:24 PM
I am still waiting for someone to figure put that my entire economics dissertation (322 pages) is a palindrome. I even published it in 2002.
Posted by: john at Jun 7, 2008 7:10:29 PM
Oddly enough, Bloomberg is reporting that former Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon is facing foreclosure.
Apparently, an alarmingly large percentage of lottery winners also end up broke within a few years.
Some sports stars and musicians have a large posse of homies and gold-diggers and hangers-on sponging off them, and live a bling-filled lifestyle with a high burn rate. And as the subprime crisis showed, lots of people suck at math and basic planning for the future.
Posted by: at Jun 7, 2008 9:21:40 PM
A fairly long palindrome that makes sense is: "Doc, note I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod."
Posted by: Milan at Jun 8, 2008 6:39:21 PM
I used to work at a sports agency and have seen this up close. The reason why these people go broke is because they make very poor decisions. Period. They all have the opportunity and income to pay for for a financial advisor, but actively choose not to, even though they almost
certainly have been solicited by one or more such companies that provide financial advice and given the charts and graphs and lectures. Instead of taking their bonuses and investing, they choose to live life in the present and enjoy the excesses that the lifestyle offers. Almost all of them are making that decision with at least some awareness and someone telling them that they might have problems later on. I don't feel terribly sorry for them and sixty percent is not a surprising figure at all to me.
Posted by: googler at Jun 10, 2008 4:23:47 PM
I was under the impression palindromes were words, not collections of words. That's why I've felt nationalistic pride at estonian having one of the longest palindromic (?) words: kuulilennuteetunneliluuk (meaning literally: the hatch in the trajectory of the bullet)
Finnish has another one: saippuakivikauppias (soap merchant)
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