Tag Archives: humor
Irony
Filed under Humor and Observations
Railroad track history – humorous but true
Why Some Things Are, the Way They Are
 The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.
Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So, who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, ‘What horse’s ass came up with this?’ , you may be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.
And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important!
Now you know, horses’ asses control almost everything…explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn’t it?
Filed under Humor and Observations
Random Humor for the Holidays…
Hopefully, these will bring a few chuckles…
- Chewbacon
- Flamingos – the real reasons dinosaurs went extinct
- Riding to school looks a bit rocky
- How new VW bugs are made
- Not sure if he hates Zombies or Hunts them…
- The Imperial Walker
- Multiple Ace
- The delay should only last a few minutes. If over 4 hours, seek help…
- You know you don’t want to laugh – but you are…
- Only old school rockers will get this
- Parking Pegs, the new thing
- Writer humor…
- At least they do have a reasonable explanation…
Filed under Humor and Observations
Cosplay Pictures for Your Saturday
Your weekly dose of amazing cosplayers and their cosplay…
- Silk Spectre 2
- X-Men, Cassandra S. Kyle far right as Wolvesbane
- Lady Deadpool
- Catwoman
- Boba Fett between bounties…
- Toni Darling and Scotty Johnson at Amazing Arizona 2013
- Tia Dworshak
- Kato and friends, Steampunk at Steamgirl.com
- Shuttle craft
- Storm
- A Clockwork Orange
- Lindsay Elyse, I think…
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Itty Bitty Geek as Harley Quinn
- Aladdin, with Vamptress Lee Anna Vamp and Nicole Marie Jean
- Judge Dredd
- Aquaman
- Black Cat by Shermie cosplay
- Cara Nicole as Black Cat
- Wonder Woman
- Zombie Captain America
- Jessica Nigri
- Mystique
- Wonder Woman
- Star Wars
- Steampunk
- Steampunk
- Steampunk
- Cara Nicole as Black Widow
- Klingons, Caitlin Fluck middle, Kurt Colin far right
- Batman
- Derp faced cosplay
- Wonder Woman and Super Woman
- Catwoman and Batman
- Sara Moni Cosplay
- Amber Skies cosplay
- Aarylyn Scarlet
- Christina Marie
- Cortney Reed
- Niki Powers
- Raychul Moore as Black Cat
- Toni Darling
- Tina Rybakova as Red Sonja
Filed under Humor and Observations
Dog Shaming Pictures for Your Monday Blues
Ahh, shaming our poor dogs for their mistakes…
Filed under Animals, Humor and Observations
Random Humor for Your Black Friday!
Enjoy!
- Taking flames on the front of his pick-up to the extreme
- Not a picture of Mother Theresa I’m familiar with…
Filed under Humor and Observations
Volkswagon Cheating Humor
As some of you know, Volkswagon created a software that cheats so that ONLY when it is being smog tested, the diesel versions emit no pollution. Â When not tested, they emit a cloud of smoke like the Great Fire of Chicago.
Filed under Humor and Observations, Uncategorized