The Most Interesting Thing I Learned This Week: Meet Chip Taylor

I'm willing to bet only a few of you have ever heard of Chip Taylor. But I'm also willing to bet that every one of you has heard at least one song written by Chip Taylor. Chip Taylor has written and performed many songs, and I've had the pleasure of watching him play live at The Granada Theater in Dallas, Texas. But the one song of his that I'm certain you know is "Wild Thing."

That's right. Wild Thing. Da da. Da da da. You make my heart sing. You make everything...groovy.

He also wrote "Angel of the Morning" made famous by several artists, most recently a version of it by Shaggy.

Chip Taylor - The Wild Thing himself

Something I came across this week that I wasn't aware of before is that Chip Taylor is just a stage name. His real name is James Wesley Voight, and he is the brother of Jon Voight - the actor not the previous owner of George Costanza's car.


By being Jon Voight's brother that also makes him Angelina Jolie's uncle.

Jon Voight with his daughter and Chip Taylor's neice

I'm sure my brother has been aware of all of this for years. He always seems to know these crazy little connections, but I just learned of it this week and thought I'd share it with you fine people.


Food, science, technology - now celebrities and music. You folks are going to be deep, well-rounded wells of completely random information before I'm done with you.

One Last Night in London

To this point we've had a blast in London, but there were a few things that we didn't get to do, so our plan for our last day here was to try to hit what we had missed. First thing on our list was to take pictures by a giant fake tree and a giant fake bear.

Giant Fake Tree

Giant Fake Bear

Okay so, maybe that wasn't our goal when we set out for the day. Really, we were going to take a tour of the Globe Theatre - well the new Globe Theatre. The original theatre burned (a few times I think) and this is a full size replica of what it was. It turns out they have a giant fake tree and a giant fake bear where you wait for the tour to start. It was pretty cool to be in there and think about what it would've been like to see one of Shakespeare's plays performed. We were a bit early for the season to start or otherwise we may have gotten the chance to experience that for ourselves. Maybe next time.

Inside the Globe - they're getting it set up for a show.

Next on our list of things that we had yet to experience was high tea. So, we made our way back to the Orangery. This time we didn't take the long route walking through the whole park. Instead we just trained as close as we could and walked from there. On our way though, we passed the Chicago Rib Shack. I thought that was funny. It seems to me if you're going to name your rib shack after some place in the U.S., Chicago would not be on the top of that list. No offense to the good rib joints in my fair city.

This time the Orangery was definitely open for business. It was so open that we had to wait in a massive line to have tea. Who knew tea was so popular?

Outside of the Orangery, again, but for real this time.

Stacie showing off her tea skills - and showing me how to be proper.

I think I got the hang of it.

Inside of the Orangery - so fancy and proper.

A picture of the station we went to on our way back to our hotel.

We did a little shopping and wandering around after our high tea, but for the most part we decided to call it an early night. We did try to go to Portobello Market because we were told Sundays were the best day to go. As it turns out, Portobello Market is closed on Sundays, so I think we got some bad intel.

We were tired and had to catch the train to Paris at 5.30AM which meant a very early morning, so we called it a day after missing out on the market.

Oh, and I don't think I've posted a pic of our hotel room yet, so just to give you an idea of where we've been laying our heads for the past four nights:

Yep. I pretty much fill up the room. Oh well - we weren't there that much anyway. The hardest part was finding a place to put our luggage.

The next post will begin the Paris portion of our vacation. By about Christmas, we should have this whole trip down on virtual pen and paper. Get excited, people!

The Most Interesting Thing I Learned This Week: You Have the Right to Remain Silent

Miranda Rights.

Have you ever been in a situation where some uniformed officer had his knee in the middle of your back while he was cuffing you and he began to say, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will..." As he's speaking you drift off, getting lost in your own thoughts, wondering, "Why do the call them Miranda rights?"

No? Never happened?

Well, me neither - allegedly.

It does so happen that I read a story recently about the Supreme Court ruling stating that you have to say, "I'm invoking my right to remain silent," in order to have your Miranda Rights to be in effect. Better file that one away just in case.

So, why Miranda? Why not Carrie, Charlotte or Samantha rights? That's for my lady reader - showing her a little special attention this week. Though I did have to Google "Sex and the City" to get the final two names. The effort should count for something ladies! I mean - lady.

Ernesto Miranda was convicted of a kidnapping and rape in 1963. His own confession was used as evidence against him in the trial. In the appeal his lawyer argued that Ernesto was not aware that he did not have to speak to the police and could wait for his lawyer before doing anything, and the ruling was reversed. Later, Ernesto was convicted without using his own confession as evidence against him.

Ernesto!

Shortly thereafter, officers began issuing Miranda warnings to those they arrested. It is not mandatory by law that the warning be read, but not reading the warning may make anything said inadmissible as evidence in a trial.

But here's the real reason I'm writing this today. Whatever happened to ol' Ernesto Miranda? Well, it turns out he was in and out of jail until 1976 when he was involved in a violent fight in which he was murdered with a knife. The suspect was caught, but he refused to speak after being read, that's right, his Miranda rights. Oh that's just dripping with irony - I hope it doesn't get on the rest of my blog.

The suspect was released without being charged and is believed to have fled to Mexico.

I think it would be cooler if they would have called them Ernesto Rights, but nobody asked me.

The Day We Stormed a Castle, Took a Bath and Henged some Stone

So, remember how we went to Europe back in April. Welcome to Day 3 of that trip! On this day, we ventured outside the city gates and into the English countryside. Our first stop was Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle is one of the official residences of The Queen, and the largest occupied castle in the world. To get to Windsor, we had scheduled a bus tour that was to take us first to Windsor, then to Bath and then on to Stonehenge before returning to London.

It was a little interesting finding our way to the bus station as it was across the street and down a bit from the rest of Victoria Station that we were familiar with at this point. But we made it with plenty of time to spare anyway and boarded for our trip right around 8AM. We would be gone for about 11 hours. Our tour guide was an older gentleman named Travis who was just fantastic.

Windsor Castle

The Tower at Windsor - most of the castles were began as towers built on mounds and then surrounded by a moat of some sort. Then the castle would grow outwards and eventually a town would spring up as the castle became a prominent place to be.

Stacie and I in front of the Tower.

A band of British soldiers playing some funky tunes.

British soldiers marching.

He was really good at not paying attention to us. His eyes darted around like crazy though. It was kind of creepy.

My turn to stand awkwardly close to a man who wanted nothing to do with us.

After touring Windsor Castle, it was time to make our way to Bath. Windsor was about a 30 minute ride from London, but Bath was going to be about 1-2 hours from Windsor. Bath was the most fantastic little town. It was tucked into the hills and had a beautiful river running through it. On the day we were there, there was big rugby match being played between Bath and one of their rivals so the town was all abuzz about that. Stacie and I toured the ancient Roman Baths, but we hustled through them in about 30 minutes in order to spend our remaining time checking out the little city. We were only given an hour and fifteen minutes here, but we've decided that we will definitely return to Bath at some point in the future.

The Roman Baths - built and used over 2,000 years ago.

A look down into the ancient spa.

Stacie and I about to take a dip. Not really - they frowned upon that. But the stone we are standing on is the same stone the English-Romans stood on as they prepared to take their dip 2,000 years ago which I find pretty amazing.

A very cool bridge in Bath. There are shops all along the inside of this bridge - you can see the back windows to the shops in this shot.

This park was beautiful and filled with people relaxing and listening to the rugby game that was being played just across the river.

Our next stop was the famous Stonehenge. You know - a bunch of rocks stacked up in a sheep pasture and no one knows why. Some think it was an ancient clock or calendar. Others believe it to be a religious monument. Some folks think aliens built it. It was pretty cool to see, but once I realized that nobody knows how it got here and nobody is ever going to know for sure, my attention began to fade. Plus I was pretty tired at this point.

Stonehenge

Us in front of Stonehenge.

More Stonehenge - there really wasn't much else out here.

After all of that we made our way back to the city on our bus. It was about a two hour ride, so we napped a bit. When we got back to London we were both hungry, and I was ready for some authentic fish and chips. So we stopped into this little place called the Bag O' Nails. It was there that I decided to order what I thought to be a cold beer. As you can see from the look on my face, I was a little disappointed.

As it turns out, I had ordered a cider while my wife was drinking a delicious John Smith. I tried to trade her to no avail. After being laughed at a bit by the waiter, he brought me my very own John Smith. All's well that end's well. Oh, and the fish and chips were excellent.

The Most Interesting Thing I Learned This Week: Five Phases of Matter and BW3

For most of the week, I didn't learn anything that was that interesting at all. I thought after two weeks, my series was already in jeopardy of being canceled. That was until I had some man-time doing some welding with my buddy, Cory. As we were repairing some metal chairs in my back courtyard and drinking a couple of High Life tall boys, I began to wonder as to the history of welding.

As I began researching welding, I came across something I had never been informed of before in my life. There are not three states, or phases, of matter as we all have grown up believing. There are in fact five! We all know about solid, liquid and gas, but actually the most prevalent state of matter in the entire universe is plasma. That's right, plasma. It's pretty close to a gas, but has too many unique qualities to be considered a gas, so it is, in fact, it's own state of matter. It's what stars consist of, mostly.

The fifth phase is called Bose-Einstein Condensate. Feel free to click the link and try to understand that particular state of matter. I read it twice and still am baffled.

All you need to take away from this is that when I have a kid, and the teacher begins to teach my kid about the three states of matter, my child will raise his or her tiny little hand and say, "But my daddy told me there were five states of matter: sowid, wiquid, gas, pwasma and Bose-Einstein Condensate." And that will be the proudest moment of my life.

Bonus Most Interesting Thing:

While we're on numbers, I asked the right man a question last night that has bugged me for years. Why do people call Buffalo Wild Wings "BW3"? I only see two W's there. My friend Patrick happened to work there at one time and knew the answer that I'm willing to bet only one of the four of you at most knows. The third W comes from Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck - the original name of the restaurant chain. The nickname stuck despite the name change.

So, what the heck is weck then? (See what I did there.) Weck is German for "roll" and the short way to say Kummelweck, which is a type of roll that BW3 served sandwiches on at the time.

Food and science this week. How am I ever going to top that?

The Most Interesting Thing I Learned This Week

The Origin of EBAY

This may be one of those weeks where the most interesting thing I came across is more interesting to some of you than to others, but what we should really focus on here is the fact that I said I was going to have a weekly post, and lo and behold, one week later a post appears. Keep that in mind.

I went to a CEO breakfast this week put on by the Chicago Young Professionals. I thought it would be fun since the person speaking was Rob Solomon, COO of Groupon. If you're not familiar with Groupon, you should check out the link.

During his speech he began talking about how Groupon was formed kind of on accident. Then he related that to other major online sites we're all familiar with that began a bit by chance. One of those was eBay.

As it turns out, Pierre Omidyar, a French-born Iranian created eBay in 1995 in San Jose, CA, as a site for his fiancee to sell her extensive collection of Pez dispenser. Apparently, she thought they might have some value, but wasn't sure how to best capitalize on that value.

That's what the the COO of Groupon told us anyway.

Pretty interesting, huh? I thought so. I thought it was interesting enough that I decided to write about it this week. But as I did some verification on the story, it turns out that's not the truth at all. In fact, that story was completely made up by an eBay PR manager in 1997. Apparently Pez dispensers got all the press buzzing. However, the story is so well known, that most people, even COOs who've spent years living in Silicon Valley, believe it to be true.

The real story is that eBay started out as an auction company by a different name selling airline tickets and other travel related items. Then when it became eBay, the first item ever to be sold was a broken laser pointer that was originally purchased as a cat toy. The item sold for $14.83. Omidyar was stunned that it sold, so he contacted the buyer who responded by saying that he was a collector of broken laser pointers. I'm pretty sure that was the moment Omidyar realized he had struck gold.

To me, this is a great example of truth being stranger than fiction. And it's also a great lesson. When you hear something interesting, don't just assume it's true - especially if you read it on the Internet. There's weirdos out there buying broken laser pointer cat toys who have access to this thing for Pete's sake.

Stuff Conservatives Like

SAYING NO

You know the old saying, "Why say no when it feels sooooo good to say yes?" Well, that saying was first uttered by a sappy, bleeding heart liberal. How do I know that? Because I am a conservative. And as a conservative I can tell you that nothing makes my lump of coal heart pump the oil that has replaced my blood faster than telling someone to take a hike.

I mean, sure, we'll tell you that we're concerned about the ever-increasing federal debt or personal responsibility, but what we really feel inside is unfettered glee at those two little letters squeezed together and passing over our lips: N-O.

Just try it. Say the word out loud. No.

Should we give money to companies that are failing?

No.

Should we expand the governments role in health care, ultimately leading to a government operated system?

NO.

Should we further throw the current budget out of whack by extending unemployment benefits despite the fact that we just passed pay-as-you-go legislation after which the president uttered these words: "Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere."

No. NO. NO!

Didn't it feel good to say that out loud? I mean, in three little breaths we have just broken the hearts of big companies, people that are sick and people that have been out of work for a long time. Delicious, wouldn't you agree?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell - I'm assuming he's saying no here. He practically can't keep the smile from erupting onto his otherwise very droopy face.

Buying the votes of citizens ain't got nothing on how it feels to kill their hopes and dreams.

Why say yes, when it feels so, so good to say no?