Tom McMahon

In Regards To A Rumor Going Around That My Five Sons Were Killed In Action

Letter From Mrs. Sullivan To The Navy

Even though the 5 Sullivan brothers were killed in action in November 1942, their parents still had not been informed two months later. Here's an excerpt from Daniel Sullivan's terrific page, The Sullivan Brothers of Waterloo, Iowa:

Security required that the Navy not reveal the loss of the Juneau or the other ships so as not to provide information to the enemy. Letters from their sons stopped arriving at the Sullivan home and the parents’ anguish began as they awaited word. One of the survivors of the Juneau wrote to Tom and Alleta, but they still clung to the hope that their sons, or at least one of them, survived. Soon an outpouring of sympathy ensued. The “Fighting Sullivan Brothers” were national heros. President Franklin Roosevelt sent a letter of condolence to Tom and Alleta. Pope Pius XII sent a silver religious medal and rosary with his message of regret. The Iowa Senate and House adopted a formal resolution of tribute to the Sullivan brothers.

Thomas and Alleta Sullivan, in spite of the intense pain of losing their five sons all at once, made speaking appearances at war plants and ship yards in behalf of the war effort. They hoped that they could help prevent the loss of other American boys. Their daughter, Genevive, often accompanied them, until she joined the WAVES on June 14, 1943. In April of that year Mrs. Sullivan christened a new destroyer, U.S.S. The Sullivans, in San Francisco. This ship is moored at Buffalo, New York as a memorial to the five brothers. Today there is a park and playground where the Sullivan house once stood. To prevent a tragedy of this magnitude from happening again, Congress passed the Sullivan Law, which would prevent brothers from serving on the same ship.

And via the Waterloo Public Library, more information about the Sullivan Law from the US Navy:

Several misconceptions, common during World War II and after, continue to circulate about the Sullivan brothers and the assignment of family members to U.S. Navy ships.

Reference to a "Sullivan Act" in connection with family members serving in the same ship/unit is a popular misconception. The Sullivan Law of 29 May 1911 is a New York State Law dealing with firearms. Although proposed after the death of the five Sullivan Brothers, no "Sullivan Act" was ever enacted by Congress related to family members serving together. Similarly, no President has ever issued any executive order forbidding assignment of family members to the same ship/unit.

I'm not sure what I'm more amazed by, the fact that Mrs. Sullivan had to endure rumors that her five sons had been killed, or that there really is no Sullivan Law. (via Reasoned Audacity and Florida Cracker).

People Are Reflections Of Their Five Closest Friends

From The Simple Dollar:

It’s often said that people are reflections of their five closest friends in many ways: behaviors, income levels, values, and so on.

Five years ago, almost all of my closest friends spent money like it was water. They were constantly doing things like playing poker, pushing each other to “one up” the rest with better gadgets and other material things, going out for drinks all the time, making fun of each other for looking less affluent, and so on. To put it simply, if you didn’t show many signs of material affluence, you were made fun of and ridiculed. You felt like less of a person if you weren’t spending money hand over fist.

Today, all of my inner circle of closest friends are pretty happy just spending an evening together playing cards or a board game. Instead of constantly going out on the town, we go to each other’s homes and hang out, watching each other’s DVD collections or playing each other’s games. We’ll make meals together and eat them together instead of going out for dinner all the time. Instead of talking about who has the latest gadget, we talk about who’s developed a better strategy at a well-played game or what sort of things we’ve been doing to improve the property we already have.

In that same time frame, my own feelings about spending money changed drastically. I went from spending rampantly to being careful about my money. I started spending more time at home rather than out and about, focusing my energy on getting good at a smaller number of things instead of chasing the new.

Perhaps most interestingly, I went from feeling pretty awful about myself to feeling pretty good about myself.

Cicada-Generated Prime Numbers

From Neatorama:

Cicadas are winged insects that evolved around 1.8 million years ago during the Pleistocene epoch, when glaciers advanced and retreated across North America. Cicadas of the genus Magicicada spend most of their lives below the ground, feeding on the juices of plant roots, and then emerge, mate, and die quickly. These creatures display a startling behavior: Their emergence is synchronized with periods of years that are usually the prime numbers 13 and 17. (A prime number is an integer such as 11, 13, and 17 that has only two integer divisors: 1 and itself.) During the spring of their 13th or 17th year, these periodical cicadas construct an exit tunnel. Sometimes more than 1.5 million individuals emerge in a single acre; this abundance of bodies may have survival value as they overwhelm predators such as birds that cannot possibly eat them all at once.

Some researchers have speculated that the evolution of prime-number life cycles occurred so that the creatures increased their chances of evading shorter-lived predators and parasites. For example, if these cicadas had 12-year life cycles, all predators with life cycles of 2, 3, 4, or 6 years might more easily find the insects. Mario Markus of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, Germany, and his coworkers discovered that these kinds of prime-number cycles arise naturally from evolutionary mathematical models of interactions between predator and prey. In order to experiment, they first assigned random life-cycle durations to their computer-simulated populations. After some time, a sequence of mutations always locked the synthetic cicadas into a stable prime-number cycle.

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! THE TEETH!

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! THE TEETH!

via PCL Linkdump

Stick Figure Museum of Western Painting

Stick Figure Museum of Western Painting

(via iconglobe)

Devo Lego

Devo Lego

Brown Shoes

Brown Shoes

Why Michael "Meathead" Stivic of All In The Family Is Still The Prototype of the American Liberal Smartass

From the Assistant Village Idiot:

My politics aligned somewhat with Michael's, but I found him an unlikeable character. The show had clearly lined up to show Archie and his ideas in the worst possible light, buffoonishly so, and this struck me as artistic abuse. As it became clear who Norman Lear and Rob Reiner were in later years, the portrayal of Archie made more sense. They had no understanding of the ideas they were mocking - even I, who also mocked them, found the stereotype to be more worthy of agit-prop than comedy. The artificial setups to always show Michael as the intelligent, thoughtful one held a childish unfairness.

But that wasn't what stuck in my craw. Michael lived in Archie's house. In all the commentary about Archie I never heard that mentioned. I imagine it came up on the show, but it was conveniently overlooked when people absorbed the stereotypes. It seemed the most basic fact about the situation: Gloria had a poorly-paying job, Edith took care of everyone, Archie provided most of the support, yet it was Michael who was delivered the put-down lines.

via The Fourth Checkraise

A Scotsman Gets A Bank Loan

A Scotsman walks into a bank in Glasgow and asks for the loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to Australia on business for two weeks and needs to borrow £5,000.

The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Scotsman hands over the keys and documents of new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the Log Book and everything checks out. The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan.

The bank's Manager and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the rough looking Scotsman for using a £120,000 Ferrari as collateral against a £5000 loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank's underground garage and parks it there.

Two weeks later, the Scotsman returns, repays the £5,000 and the interest, which comes to £15.41. The loan officer says, "Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi millionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow "£5,000" ?

The Scotsman replies:

"Where else in Glasgow can I park my car for two weeks for only £15.41 and expect it to be there when I return'"

(from here)

A Robbery in Texas

A hooded robber burst into a Texas Bank and forced the tellers to load a sack full of cash.

On his way out the door a brave Texas customer grabbed the hood and pulled it off revealing the robber's face. The robber shot the customer without a moment's hesitation. He then looked around the bank and noticed one of the tellers looking straight at him. The robber instantly shot him also.

Everyone else, by now very scared, looked intently down at the floor in silence. The robber yelled, "Well, did anyone else see my face?" There are a few moments of utter silence, in which everyone was plainly afraid to speak.

Then one old man raised his hand and said," I think my wife may have caught a glimpse of you."

Turkey Deep Fat Fryer Checklist

Turkey Deep Fat Fryer Checklist

Sixty Percent of Those Canned French Fried Onions Are Sold Between October and December

Sixty Percent of Those Canned French Fried Onions Are Sold Between October and December

From the Washington Post a couple of years back:

They must taste like they have since 1955, when Campbell's invented the homey two-can side dish, your beans and your cream of mushroom soup, a soft, soothing mush of a thing given a kick and a crunch with your can of FFOs....

There's really only one shot for the plant to get its production right. French's mustard and its GourMayo sells all year long, but its onions? Sixty percent of the company's FFO sales come between October and December, say French's officials, or 30 million units of canned onion aroma. ...

To ask why we eat FFOs is an attempt to get at the root of Thanksgiving gluttony itself. There is no reason except that we are Americans and it is our God-given right.

Butterball Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer

Butterball Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer

But as of today, November 1, it's only available for pre-order.

Political Comedy Sports

Political Comedy Sports

To Larry David and HBO, This Is Just Being Playful

To Larry David and HBO, This Is Just Being Playful

Mugs-A-Plenty: Rusty Jones

Mugs-A-Plenty: Rusty Jones

Sent in by reader Susan Hensley. (Thanks Sue!!!!) For more on ol' Rusty, see my previous post Does Anybody Out There Have An Image Of The Old Rusty Jones Rustproofing Guy From The 1980s?