1,000 times faster

Winners:  Pluto and Droppin’

Team selection is random but somehow Pluto was paired with Droppin’. Although they were odds on favorites, the winners were seriously challenged by all teams, but especially by FrankC and Rosebud, who came within one carelessly flipped card from a win. The other teams close behind included Maddy and Margaret the Red who received the “Dropping Leaf” award.

Pluto says he likes this team thing, “he only has to work half as hard”. Miss Connie thinks this is such a great idea that she plans to travel from across the sea to join us next week. Johnny G and Bobby Barcelona may also join us. This team concept could be just what one of them needs to reach that elusive goal – a win on Tuesday night.

Good Question!:
How much faster is the typical PC of today vs. one from 20 years ago?

Answer: 1,000 times faster.

WOW! That’s impressive, but do you know that the recently released iPhone 5 has the computational power of the most powerful laptop Apple sold just 10 years ago. A 3.5-inch floppy disk could store a measly 1.44 megabytes of data –
not even enough to fit a single mp3 music file. Today, a small 8 gigabyte (8,000 megabytes) USB flash drive or SD chip can store about 1,600 songs.

Where is this headed? What will computers and storage that are smaller, faster, more powerful, do to our lives?

If you are interested, drop me a line right here in the comment section below and if there is enough interest I will flesh this blog post out.

BTW, in contrast to this serious stuff, here is a video of a young Woody Allen and Dick Cavett discussing “particle physics’. Stick with it at least until Woody talks about his ex-wife and “moving violations”.

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Woody’s Orgasmatron

Winner: Uncle Jim

Despite the absence of a number of regulars, what could be a record number of would-be millionaires (27) packed into Main Street for this week’s quiz.  Our terrific host Kelly gets all the credit for this turnout, since most of the crowd seemed to be related to her. (Daphne take note –  an occasional sister just won’t cut it anymore, no matter how charming.)  Kelly held her own with the large crowd, delivering Darin’s quiz that was a mixture of music, Greek mythology, sports, and sex.  I think Darin succeeded in embarrassing young Kelly by having her ask questions about sex in front of her extended family.  Not surprisingly, given the large crowd, there was a three way tie for first place.  Also not surprisingly, two of the winners were Kelly’s relatives – Uncle Joe and Uncle Jim, along with Droppin’ Dave.  A single tie-breaker question left Uncle Jim as the winner.  Congratulations Jim.

Good question! In  Woody Allen’s 1973 movie “Sleeper”, what was the name of the machine that replaced sex?

 Answer:   Orgasmatron.

In Sleeper, the orgasmatron looks like a large phone booth that induces orgasms in people of the future, who are otherwise impotent, except those of Italian heritage. You can probably imagine Woody’s encounter with this machine. There is also an orgasmic orb with a similar effect that gets passed around at parties like a joint.  Except of course when Allen’s character Bogarts it.

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Allen may have been parodying the idea of the orgone accumulator, a dubious device invented by a supposedly legitimate psychologist named Wilhelm Reich.  His invention also resembled a phone booth, and was never demonstrated to work at all.  It was supposed to concentrate a kind of cosmic energy in patients that sat inside of it, for supposedly healing effects.  For some reason, this idea was ridiculed.

An orgasmatron also appeared in the 1964 movie “Barbarella”, starring Jane Fonda in the title role, although here it was called the excessive machine.  It resembled a giant transparent clam with stimulating paddles on the inside that were manipulated by a keyboard operator on the outside.  In one of the final scenes of the movie, the villain tries to kill Barbarella using the machine to induce death by orgasm (this would have made Dr. Kevorkian much more likeable).  However, Barbarella overloads the machine and it breaks, leaving her feeling just fine.

Science fiction seems to return to this idea quite often.  There are the pleasure rings in Coneheads,  a sex ray in Flesh Gordon, and an unnamed device in Demolition Man.

The future is looking brighter.

Thanks to our special Guest Blogger this week – Droppin’ Dave.

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