Wow

Golf has rules.

Fourteen clubs are the maximum allowed in one player's bag. Any number below 14 is fine, but more than 14 is not. Also, those 14 clubs cannot be changed during the course of one round. You must finish with the 14 you started with.

However, if you begin with fewer than 14, you may add clubs during a round as long as no delay is caused and as long as the club(s) added are not borrowed from another player. There's a penalty for breaking the 14 club rule but I'll leave that to your imagination. Now aren't you glad you know this. Just in case.

Lick Me

Lychee

Pendulum Clock

Pendulum Clock: "Keep track of the time with this stylish pendulum clock. Edit the settings of the clock to change the color and to make it tick and play Westminster Chimes."

Happy Flag Day

What's A Jerk?

"Strictly Personal" was a syndicated newspaper column from the '40s to the '80s written by Sidney J. Harris. I particularly like this one from 1961:

A Jerk

I don't know whether history repeats itself, but biography certainly does. The other day, Michael came in and asked me what a "jerk" was--the same question Carolyn put to me a dozen years ago.

At that time, I fluffed her off with some inane answer, such as, "A jerk isn't a very nice person," but both of us knew it was an unsatisfactory reply. When she went to bed, I began trying to work up a suitable definition.

It is a marvelously apt word, of course. Until it was coined, there was really no single word in English to describe the kind of person who is a jerk--"boob" and "simp" were too old hat, and besides they really didn’t fit, for they could be lovable, and a jerk never is.

Thinking it over, I decided that a jerk is basically a person without insight. He is not necessarily a fool or a dope, because some extremely clever persons can be jerks. In fact, it has little to do with intelligence as we commonly think of it; it is, rather, a kind of subtle but persuasive aroma emanating from the inner part of the personality.

I know a college president who can be described only as a jerk. He is not an unintelligent man, nor unlearned, nor even unschooled in the social amenities. Yet he is a jerk cum laude, because of a fatal flaw in his nature--he is totally incapable of looking into the mirror of his soul and shuddering at what he sees there.

A jerk, then, is a man (or woman) who is utterly unable to see himself as he appears to others. He has no grace, he is tactless without meaning to be, he is a bore even to his best friends, he is an egotist without charm. All of us are egotists to some extent, but most of us--unlike the jerk--are perfectly and horribly aware of it when we make asses of ourselves. The jerk never knows.