Notes from the Brooklyn Polygnostic Institute

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Arcanum

The Superb Owl is the yearly event for owl breeders to see who has the most superb owl based on appearance, bone structure, intelligence, obedience, agility and quality of fecal pellets. The audience for this contest is small, but extremely dedicated and wealthy with a 30 second ad selling for millions of dollars. This year, just as the Westminster Dog show decided to include cats, the Superb Owl decided to allow falcons to compete with a lot of breeders coming from Georgia and other Central Asian nations that used to be part of the Soviet Union.
 
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Over 70,000 children are abducted every year in China and less than .1% are tracked down and reunited with their birth parents. Some of the children are stolen in broad daylight by criminal gangs. Others are stolen from hospitals by criminals disguised as nurses. Baby girls are sold for $3,000, boys for $5,000. Some are adopted while others work as slaves in factories or brothels.


May be verified in the article China’s Child Laundering Industry : Hospitals, doctors, and officials conspire to create fake birth certificates to mask the origins of abducted children, who are then sold as orphans by Frank Fang that appeared in the January 13-19 2017 Epoch Weekend.
 
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Fun Fact

One Harvard applicant included a taxidermied squirrel with the application. It didn’t help, not because it was a taxidermied squirrel because it was a poorly taxidermied squirrel that was falling apart and had a foul odor.

May be verified in A Field Guide To Awkward Silences by Alexandra Petri
 
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Fun fact

The word Poindexter literally means right-hand (dextre) fist (poing) in French. It became associated with nerds after the name was used for Felix the cat's scientist friend who exhibited a bunch of nerdy traits.

May be verified in wikipedia.
 
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The stereotypical police officer of silent films, that he was lazy, corrupt, brutal, hired via nepotism, flirtatious with young women, prone to steal apples from fruit vendors and fond of and easily bribed with beer stems from anti-Irish prejudices of the era.

Happy St. Patrick’s day oh Seekers of Knowledge

May be verified in American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny by Christopher Miller pg. 261
 
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Guinness beer was founded by in 1759 a Unionist who was accused of spying for the Brittish before the Irish rebellion of 1798. His heirs continued the tradition. In 1913 one of his descendents gave the Ulster Volunteer Force the equivalent of 1.4 million dollars to fund a paramilitary campaign to resist Ireland being given legislative independence. It was alleged to have lent men and equipment to help the British Army crush the Easter Rising of 1916 and afterwards fired workers suspected of having Irish-nationalist sympathies. Porter stout is based on a London ale that was a favorite of porters. Guinness almost relaunched the brand as a London beer in 1982 because it feared that association with the IRA would hurt the brand.

You may want to change how you celebrate this St. Patrick’s Day oh seekers of knowledge.

May be verified in Go Figure Thing You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know The Economist Explains by Tom Standage pg. 141
 
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According to pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman, in 200 years Chuck Berry will be regarded as THE representative "Rock and Roll", "Rock N Roll" and Rock musician .

May be verified in But What If We’re Wrong? By Chuck Klosterman
 
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Fun Fact

Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry was put on the record album of Earth sounds that was on the spacecraft Voyager, the first spacecraft to leave the solar system.
Here Comes the Sun was considered and all four of the Beatles wanted it to be included, but none of them owned the copyright, so it wasn’t included for legal reasons.

May be verified in But What If We’re Wrong? By Chuck Klosterman pg. 83-84
 
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Fact

In 2011 663,032 people were arrested in the U.S. for marijuana possession, 128.328 more than were arrested for all violent crimes combined.


May be verified in the Noted section of the February 1, 2013 issue of The Week magazine. The Week got the information from HuffingtonPost.com.
 
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Fact

The first American city to ban the sale or possession of marijuana was El Paso in 1914. By 1931, 29 states outlawed marijuana. Marijuana was made illegal because it was the favored intoxicant of the Mexican refugees who fled to the American Southwest in the wake of political upheaval in Mexico in the Revolution of 1910. Texas police officers claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, a “lust for blood” and gave its users “super-human strength.” There are also rumors that Mexicans were distributing marijuana to American school children .

May be verified in Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, And Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser. Pg. 19-20.
 
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Fun Fact

Red Foxx supported himself as a marijuana dealer to the clubs where he performed in the 1940’s.

May be verified in The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy by Kliph Nesteroff Pg. 187
 
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Fun fact

Julian Koenig a prominent New York advertising copywriter came up with the phrase “Earth Day” because it rhymed with Birthday


May be verified in an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York
 
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Fun Fact
The May Day practice of dancing around a Maypole is most likely a Christianization of the practice of copulating in forests on May Day.

May be verified in Lives of the Trees An Uncommon History by Diana Wells p. 54
 
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Fun Fact


The Hawthorn tree was also called the May tree because it would blossom on May Day. In 1752 the British calendar changed so now hawthorn trees bloom two weeks after May Day. Hawthorn was one of the trees associated with Christ’s crown of thorns and they were thought to have spiritual powers. Hawthorn branches were often put on ships to protect the sailors. The mayflower was named after the hawthorn tree.


May be verified in Lives of the Trees An Uncommon History by Diana Wells p. 154
 
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Fun Fact

Jack in the Green is a man who dresses up in foliage until he looks like a walking shrub. This character has been appearing in May Day celebrations in England beginning in the 18th century, not the Middle Ages as one might think. In the 1970’s as the Lord of the Rings started to gain popularity, many English villages started reinstating these May Day processions and Morris dancing on May Day.

May be verified in : The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller
 
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Fact

Online sales of Ivanka Trump's fashion line soared in February despite a boycott and retailers like Nordstrom dropping the brand. The label was ranked 550th in sales on the fashion search engine Lyst by mid-February it was the site's 11th most popular brand.

May be verified in the the Bottom Line section of the March 24, 2017 issue of The Week magazine. The information originally appeared in USA Today
 
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Fun fact

Domino's pizza stock has grown more than 2,000% since 2010. Their sales have been increasing steadily since the company switched to a new, better-tasting pizza recipe in 2009 after tying with Chuck E. Cheese in consumer taste testing.

May be verified in the the Bottom Line section of the April 7, 2017 issue of The Week magazine. The information originally appeared in OZ.com
 
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Fun Fact

Although the most common translation of the Sanskrit word yoga is yoke, the word could also mean war chariot, warlike, being industrious and a fraud.

May be verified in the article 20 Things You Didn't Know About Yoga by Gemma Tarlach that Appeared in the July/August 2017 issue of Discover Magazine
 
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