Sure, the next time you're laid off, salaried down, underbudgeted, or wearing hand-me-downs, you could blame the economy. But why pick on the economy when you can pick on the economist instead?

1. Adam Smith (1723 - 1790)

Ever felt a push from behind on your way to work, but when you turned around no one was there? It was probably Smith's "invisible hand," the force that leads individuals pursuing self-interest to provide useful goods and services for others. Champion of the free market, Smith [wiki] pretty much founded economics as a systematic discipline, and his ideas echo through the profession to the present day. If you don't believe in economic forecasting, read Smith's masterwork, The Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith, a native Scot, argued that Great Britain couldn't afford to hold its rebellious American colonies - an impressive conjecture considering Britain's world domination at the time.

2. David Ricardo (1772 - 1823)

Ricardo [wiki] became the poster boy for middle achievers everywhere when he came up with the idea of comparative advantage. He showed how free trade allows countries to specialize in what they do best - even if they're not very good at anything. The same principle explains why Michael Jordan doesn't fix roofs, even though he might be better at it than many roofers; it's more efficient for him to focus on basketball. Disinherited for marrying outside his family's Jewish faith, Ricardo was originally a successful banker in London, then a mamber of Parliament, before he became an economist. In his "Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock," Ricardo presented the law of diminishing returns, which explains how adding more labor and machinery to a piece of land (or other fixed asset) after a certain point is just unproductive.

3. John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)

Before Keynes [wiki], economics was in its classical phase. After him, it was in its Keynesian phase (just as there was Newtonian physics before Albert Einstein came along). The Great Depression convinced Keynes that the government had to engage in deficit spending to combat unemployment, a major break from the economic thinking of the time. He first became well known after World War I when he quit his British Treasury job, complaining that the Treaty of Versailles would wreak economic havoc. (He was right.) He also helped set up the system of fixed exchange rates used for decades after World War II. Unlike the majority of economists, Keynes led the life of a celebrity: he married a Russian ballerina, drank Champagne with literary figures, and made a fortune in the stock market. Keynes once said, "I would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong," which may account for continued arguments between "new Keynesian" and "new classical" economists.

4. Joseph Schumpeter (1883 - 1950)

Scumpeter [wiki], born in Austria, reportedly vowed to become the best economist, horseman, and lover in Vienna - and later regretted not meeting the horseman goal. He argued that economists' traditional idea of competition (similar companies competing on price) was much less important than "creative destruction," whereby entrepreneurs create new products and industries. He predicted that capitalism would be undermined by its own success. But unlike Karl Marx, Schumpeter didn't look forward to the system's demise. He wrote, "If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently, this does not mean that he desires it."

5. John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006)

Galbraith [wiki] once said, "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." A prolific author and adept debater, Galbraith stands among the economists best known outside the economics profession. The Canadian-born Galbraith moved to the United States in the 1930s and worked as a price controller in World War II, a Harvard professor, an advisor to President John F. Kennedy, and eventually a U.S. ambassador to India. A persistent concern of his long career has been with corporate power. In such books as The Affluent Society (1958) and The New Industrial State (1967), he argued that big companies have little to fear from competitors and exercise lots of influence over consumers. Not everyone liked the thesis, of course; critics have pointed out that big companies sometimes lose market share and go out of business.

6. Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006)

Friedman [wiki] advocated free-floating exchange rates, school vouchers, the shift from the draft to a volunteer military, and for doctors to be allowed to practice medicine without a license. A proponent of free markets and limited government, Friedman challenged the Keynesian ideas that dominated economics in the decades after World War II and instead supported monetarism, an emphasis on the role of money in the economy. Born to immigrants in New York City, Friedman spent much of his career at the University of Chicago. In 1976 he won the Nobel Prize for economics for, among other things, "his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy" - meaning, why government has so much trouble keeping the economy on an even keel. His fame, however, only grew. In 1979 Friedman's book Free to Choose (coauthored by his wife and accompanied by a public-television series) reached a worldwide audience.

From mental_floss' book Condensed Knowledge: A deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again, published in Neatorama with permission. Original article written by Kenneth Silber and Alexei Bayer.

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Some say the U.S. national pastime is baseball. Others say it's football. Or basketball. Or jai alai. But you can forget all those, because these seven examples prove that when it comes to sports, mankind's favorite pastime is lying, cheating, pulling pranks, and spreading hoaxes! Play ball!

1. A Black Pox on the Black Sox

The 1919 Chicago White Sox Team Photo (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

This is pretty much the mac-daddy of all sports scandals. The 1919 Chicago White Sox was one of the greatest baseball teams ever to take the field, including superstar left fielder "Shoeless" Joe Jackson.

But two gamblers, "Sleepy Bill" Burns and Billy Maharg, backed up by gangster Arnold Rothstein, changed that by bribing eight players with $100,000 to throw the World Series [wiki]. The fix was a success, the Sox lost, and nobody really suspected a thing until late in the next season, when the eight players were indicted.  Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis suspended them all from baseball for life, and they all had it coming.

Except one. "Shoeless" Joe did all he could to avoid being involved: he told Sox owner Charles Comiskey about the scam, but was ignored; he asked to be benched for the Series, but was refused; he even batted .375 for the Series and had 12 base hits (a Series record at the time) and the only home run. Due to the scandal, Jackson is still not in the Hall of Fame, though many players have supported his induction.

2. Stella "the Fella" Walsh

In 1980, a 69-year-old member of the National Track & Field Hall of Fame was shot and killed outside a Cleveland shopping mall. Police immediately ascertained that the victim was Stella Walsh, the greatest female track-and-field athlete of her day. Stella, born Stanislawa Walasiewiczowna in Poland, won a gold medal for Poland at the 1932 Olympics and a silver in 1936, and set 20 world records. But when the police took the body to be autopsied, they found something very unusual on the 69-year-old woman: male genitals?! Further studies showed that she ... er, he ... had both male and female chromosomes, a condition called mosaicism. When the shocking news got out, it took approximately 2.7 seconds for the great runner to get a new nickname: Stella the Fella.

3. Mighty Sports Illustrated Fans Strike Out

The greatest baseball pitcher of all time was actually a figment of George Plimpton's imagination. His article for the April 1, 1985, issue of Sports Illustrated was entitled "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch."

It told the story of an English orphan, raised by an archaeologist, educated at Harvard, and trained by a yogi in Tibet, who showed up at the Mets training camp in Florida. He could throw a fastball at 168 mph (the record at the time was a comparatively sluggish 103) and preferred to pitch with one foot bare and the other in a large hiking boot. As of the magazine's publishing date, Finch hadn't yet decided if he was going to play for the Mets.

The response was massive. Sports Illustrated received over 2,000 letters immediately following the story, many expressing their hopes that Sidd would play. Two weeks later, the magazine fessed up to their hoax. Of course, the clever Plimpton had included a subtle clue in the article's subhead: "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent lifestyle, Sidd's deciding about yoga ..." Confused? Just take the first letter of each word: "happyaprilfoolsday."

4. Rosie the (Underhanded) Runner

On April 21, 1980, a young woman crossed the finish line to win the 84th Boston Marathon in the record time of 02:31:56. For someone who had just ran over 26 miles, Rosie Ruiz [wiki] looked notably sweatless and un-rubbery in the legs. Race officials checked photos and video from various spots in the race, and Ruiz appeared in none of them.

So how did she do it? Here's the prevailing theory: She started the race with the others, then left the course, hopped a subway, then reentered the course about a half mile from the finish line. She was disqualified and stripped of her title. So, how'd she fine tune her con? By cheating in another marathon, of course. Rosie had sneaked her way past New York Marathon officials, and her time qualified her for the Boston race.

5. Simonya Popova: aka How the Women's Tennis Association Got Served

With the advent of computer-generated imagery, the art of the hoax really came into its own. Take the case of Simonya Popova, a female teenage tennis sensation from Uzbekistan who made Anna Kournikova look like Billy Jean King. In the fall of 2002, a Jon Wertheim article in Sports Illustrated profiled Popova, proclaiming her the next great phenom on the tennis circuit. It covered five pages and even had a picture.

But Popova was a complete fiction; her image was computer generated. Even the name Simonya was chosen as reference to SimOne, a movie about a computer-generated actress who becomes a star. The story was done as a fictional what-if, intended to be a comment on tennis's need for a hot new superstar to give the sport some mojo. But the Women's Tennis Association wasn't exactly amused. A spokeswoman for the organization lambasted the magazine, claiming they should've used the five pages to cover real tennis players. And, for the record, they said, "We have tons of mojo."

6. The Great Potato Caper

The date: August 28, 1987. The scene: Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The AA Reading Phillies were in town to play the hometown Williamsport Bills, when Bills catcher Dave Bresnahan decided to pull a stunt he'd been thinking about for weeks.

With a runner on third, Bresnahan threw the ball over to the head of the third baseman and into the outfield. The runner jogged home, thinking he had an easy run. But unbeknownst to him and the 3,500 fans at the game, Bresnahan still had the ball. The object he had thrown was a potato, meticulously peeled and shaped to look like a baseball.

Everyone got a chuckle out of the hoax. Everyone, that is, except Williamsport manager Orlando Gomez, who promptly ejected Bresnahan and fined him a whopping $50. Bresnahan had the last laugh, though: Instead of the money, he gave Gomez 50 potatoes.

7. A Rose Bowl Is a Rose Bowl Is a Rose Bowl (Except When CalTech's Involved)

It seems fitting that what is widely regarded as the greatest college prank of all time was pulled off by the college where pranking is practically a major: CalTech. (Students once changed the well-known "Hollywood" sign to read "CalTech," despite the massive security around the joint.)

Since the Rose Bowl game is played in CalTech's backyard of Pasadena, the students and their head pranksters, the Fiendish 14, were miffed at the lack of publicity the event generated for their school. So they finally decided to take it out on the game's participants in 1961 (neither of which happened to be CalTech - the game was between the University of Washington and the University of Minnesota).

The students learned of an elaborate halftime spectacle planned by the Washington cheerleaders that involved 2,232 flip cards. One CalTech student, disguised as a high school newspaper reporter, interviewed Washington's head cheerleader to learn their plan. The CalTech students then stole on of the instruction sheets, made 2,232 copies of it, altered each one by hand [wiki], then swapped them with real cards while the cheerleaders were visiting Disneyland.

The next day, live on national television, thousands of Huskies fans held up cards to make a picture of a Husky. Instead, viewers saw a Beaver, CalTech's mascot. One of the next card formations read "Seiksuh" (read it backward and you'll get it). And finally, the pièce de résistance: The cards read, in giant letters, "CalTech."

From mental_floss' book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History's Naughtiest Bits, published in Neatorama with permission.

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1. Quoits

The West Saltoun Quoiting team on the Quoit Green, c. 1890
(Image Credit: David Scott, Bolton and Saltoun Parishes)

When the pilgrims sailed away from England’s shores, they left behind religious tyranny – and quoits [wiki]. The sport, which involved throwing metal rings at a stake (called a hob), quickly became the overshadowed sibling of horseshoes.

The game was invented in Britain during the first millennium C.E.; either in the early Middle Ages or even further back, when the Isles were part of the Roman Empire. Either way, it’s definitely a British game. The shape of the throwing device is the only major difference between quoits and horseshoes, meaning that close now counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, slow dancing, and quoits.

2. Skittles

A game of skittles in Knockaloe Camp, an internment camp for over 20,000 German civilians interned during World War I (Image Credit: Knockaloe)

Even though you know it only as a type of candy, skittles [wiki] is a sport that’s been popular in Britain for centuries. It’s similar to modern-day bowling, in that a ball or disk is thrown at pins, but skittles employs nine pins instead of 10. Also, scoring is based on how many throws it takes to knock over all of the pins, rather than the American two-hurl limit.

Another difference between skittles and bowling is that, with bowling alleys, the beer came to the game. In Britain, the game came to the beer – skittles competitions originated in pubs and inns.

3. Sepak Takraw

Highlights from the sepak takraw match in 2002 Asian Games in Busan, South Korea.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

Once upon a time, volleyball and soccer were in love, but their parents disapproved and kept them apart. Now, the only remnant of their brief union is a lovechild called sepak takraw [wiki]. The sport inherited its mother’s net and, sadly, its father’s aversion to using arms. Consequently, the game challenges a player to pass the ball over the net using the feet, legs, body, and head.

Commonly played on a badminton court, takraw (as the pros call it) was first introduced in Southeast Asia. Today, it’s the national sport of Malaysia and an official event at the Asian Games.

4. Land Sailing

Land sailing in Quend, France (Image credit: Jean-noël Lafargue, Wikipedia)

In land sailing [wiki], as the name entails, water’s not included. Instead, a competitor must sit onboard his vessel and use his hands and feet to push the boat along the ground (usually a dried-up river bed). Normally, that would be next to impossible, but land sailing involves the correspondingly bizarre land yacht, equipped with three wheels. This quirky pastime might sound like something invented by the morons on MTV’s “Jackass,” but – truth is – the sport is more than a century old. That said, it does have its sillier modern-day incarnations. Every year, Australians hold the Henley-on-Todd Regatta, in which wheels are disregarded, and contestants actually carry the boat to the finish line.

5. Shinty

A Game of Shinty (Image Credit: Bruiach1 [flickr])

Leave it to the Scots to make an already-violent game even more bloodthirsty. Similar to field hockey, the Scotland-born sport of shinty [wiki] involves two teams of players using curved sticks to knock a ball into the opponent’s goal. However, there’s no offside rule, meaning “accidental” run-ins with the goalie aren’t illegal. The sport thrives today in Scotland, where modern rules for the centuries-old game were first established in 1879. Surprisingly, neither skirts nor kilts are part of the uniform.

6. Tug-of-War

Tug of War competition from Charles Lucas, The Olympic Games 1904. St. Louis, MO: Woodward and Tiernan, 1905 (Library of Congress Collections).

Tug-of-war [wiki] is so old that it might date back to the first time Cain and Abel wanted to wear the same fig leaf. Regardless, we do know it was used on occasion to solve disputes between villages or peoples and was a prominent feature in the ancient Olympic games.

The modern Games included the sport as well, until it was discontinued in 1920. (Hey, something had to be sacrificed to make way for race walking). Still, tug-of-war remains a competitive sport throughout most of the world. Today, 30 countries belong to the Tug-of-War International Federation, and an international competition still occurs every four years.

7. Unicycle Hockey

Unicycle Hockey (Image Credit: Sixball [flickr])

Sometimes, games involving large, toothless Canadians armed with wooden sticks can seem a bit too easy. So how do you make ice hockey more difficult? Play it on unicycles! Following the same basic rules as ice hockey, “uni-hockey” enjoyed scattered success for nearly 25 years in America, Europe, and Asia. Leagues even formed in Germany and Great Britain. Then the new millennium arrived, complete with plenty of flashing lights and pretty zeroes. Distracted by all the excitement, the few remaining enthusiasts climbed aboard their one-wheel chariots and rode off into the sunset.

8. Bandy

Bandy, the gentler brother of hockey. (Image Credit: dapeel [flickr])

If unicycle hockey is ice hockey’s more challenging cousin, then think of bandy [wiki] as its kinder, gentler big brother. Bandy originated in 18th-century England (before ice hockey, which uses a smaller skating surface), and it’s played with a ball, not a puck. Also, to avoid all that unpleasant fighting and bodychecking players do in ice hockey, bandy teams are confined to designated half of the playing field. These days, the sport is most popular in Scandinavia, the Baltics, and mainland Asia.

9. Korfball

Korfball (Image Credit: robw1882 [flickr])

Have you ever been bored to tears watching an NBA game and thought, “if only this were a co-ed sport without all that distracting dribbling and running.” Well, Nico Broekhuysen read your mind.

In 1901, the Dutch school teacher invented Korfball [wiki], a game in which two teams attempt to score points by passing a ball through a basket at either end of the court. The trick? Players are confined to a particular zone (either attack or defense) on the field and can’t run when they’re holding the ball, meaning they have to pass the ball to have any shot at advancing.

The Netherlands quickly caught korfball fever, and enthusiasts there formed the first league in 1903. Today, the International Korfball Association serves teams in more than 30 member countries.

10. Bog Snorkeling

See this excellent slideshow on the bizarre sport of bog snorkeling: Link

Late each August on Summer Bank Holiday in the U.K., you can travel to the quaint Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells for the World Bog Snorkeling Championship. Sponsored by Ben and Jerry’s ice cream (yeah, we don’t know why either), bog snorkeling [wiki] requires competitors to swim a today of 120 yards through muddy, peat-filled waters armed with only a snorkel, fins, and the recommended – though not required – wetsuit.

The slimy sport was conceived by hotel manager Gordon Green, who – incidentally – is the same man responsible for the annual Man-Versus-Horse Marathon, the Real Ale Ramble (a pub crawl, only more cardiovascular), and the even more challenging World Mountain Bike Bog Snorkeling Championship.

Green’s scheme? Create wacky sporting events to bring visitors to Llanwrtyd Wells (and his hotel), which is the smallest town in Britain. His reward? A 2001 MBE medal for his “services to tourism in Mid-Wales.”

The article above was written by Laurel Mills and published in the March – April 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine, reprinted on Neatorama with permission.

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1. Socrates, the Barefoot Bum

Notoriously ugly, clad in one coat long beyond its years, and always shoeless, yet possessed of charisma that made the youth swoon, Socrates was a fixture in the marketplace of Athens.

There he would engage people with the Socratic method, beginning with a question that seemed straightforward and easy enough to answer, such as, What is virtue? Never content with the first answer, his irony and follow-up questions would inevitably lead to contradictions or admissions of ignorance on the part of his interlocutors.

Socrates rubbed some people the wrong way, though, and was brought to trial on trumpeted charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. Defiant to the end, Socrates suggested that the proper sentence for his “crimes” would be free meals at the public expense, as he had done the city good. The jury gave him a hemlock cocktail instead.

2. Diogenes, a Cynic’s Cynic

Always suspicious of society and philosophers, Diogenes (died ca. 320 BCE) would stop at nothing to make a point. He once ripped the feathers out of a live chicken to disprove Plato’s account of human beings as the only featherless biped. Asked once what wine he liked best, his cynical response was “other peoples’.”

Alexander the Great, intrigued by stories about Diogenes, sought him out and announced, “I am Alexander the Great. What can I do for you?” “Stand back – you block my light” was Diogenes’ response. While the ordinary person would have lost his head after such an insult, Diogenes was admired all the more, as the great conqueror said, “If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

3. Peter Abelard (1079-1144), the Castrated Cleric

Sex scandals are nothing new to the Catholic Church. Take the case of Abelard, the influential medieval philosopher who, ironically, did important work in ethics and logic. The young cleric fell in love with a beautiful young girl named Héloïse, whom he was supposed to be tutoring, and they married secretly, though they lived apart.

Héloïse’s uncle, however, mistakenly thought Abelard had discarded Héloïse by placing her in a convent, and he took revenge by having servants castrate Abelard in his sleep. Abelard woke up and things were never the same between him and Héloïse (needless to say, things were never the same between his legs either).

The ill-fated pair were, however, reunited in death, buried together at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris and immortalized in song by Cole Porter: “As Abelard said to Eloise, ‘Don’t forget to drop a line to me, please’” (from “Just One of Those Things”).

4. Marx: Big Heart, Skinny Wallet

Unable to find work as philosophy professor, Karl Marx (1818-1883) plotted a revolution. Working intermittently as journalist and largely relying on the charity of friends, Marx lost many apartments and even some children for lack of financial resources.

Declaring religion “the opiate of the masses,” Marx found no solace in a better world to come, but instead sought to change the one he inhabited. “A specter is haunting Europe,“ he said, “the specter of communism. The workers of the world have nothing to lose but their chains.”

History revealed Marx didn’t adequately anticipate capitalism’s ability to shift and change to avoid the revolution, as later workers’ movement won concessions in the form of labor laws, the welfare state, and five-day work week. So, the next time you sleep late on a Saturday, make sure to give props to the man who made the dream of the weekend off a reality.

5. Arthur Schopenhauer, Poodle-Loving Pessimist

The ultimate pessimist, Schopenhauer (1788-1860) viewed reality as a malicious trap, believing we live in the worst of all possible worlds. A notorious misogynist, Schopenhauer once pushed a woman down a flight of stairs. Grudgingly, he paid her regular restitution for her injuries until her death, when he recorded in his journal, “The old woman dies, the burden is lifted.”

Schopenhauer despised noise but inexplicably had a fondness for something more odious, poodles. A series of disposable poodles were his constant companions for most of his life.

Not a pleasant academic colleague, Schopenhauer resented the success of Hegel, whose philosophy he thought was the worst kind of nonsense. Perhaps planning to undo Hegel, Schopenhauer scheduled his course lectures at the same time as Hegel’s. The result, however, was an early retirement for Arthur.

6. Nietzsche: A Bad Boy Who Wasn’t

One might think he railed against the corrupting influence of Christianity and declared “God is dead,” because of his own misery (Nietzsche suffered from migraine headaches and poor digestion, topped off with bouts of insomnia). But the guy whose autobiographical Ecce Homo includes such chapters as “Why I Am So Wise,” “Why I Am So Clever,” and “Why I Write Such Good Books” was actually an unassuming, mild-mannered man. His belief in “the will to power” as the most basic human drive finds little reflection in his own life outside his fantasies.

Though he fancied himself a warrior and a ladies’ man, Nietzsche’s military service was brief and unspectacular, and he never had a lover. As a bad boy in college, he may have visited a brothel or two, though. One theory suggests that the insanity that cut his career short and institutionalized him for the last 11 years of his life was the result of untreated syphilis.

7. Heidegger, Nazi Sympathizer

Though he originally planned to become a Catholic priest, this philosopher of being was far from holy. He carried on an extramarital affair with his gifted student Hannah Arendt, who later fled Germany to avoid persecution as a Jew. This might seem a peccadillo, except that Martin Heidegger was an anti-Semite who embraced the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich.

Notoriously, Heidegger had his dictation dedication page in his Being and Time removed in subsequent printings of the book, as it paid homage to Edmund Husserl, his former teacher, a Jew. At a time when intellectuals should have risen up, Heidegger sank to the lowest common denominator. What’s worse, he never recanted or apologized.

8. Bertrand Russell, Cambridge Casanova

An innovator in mathematics and logic, and one of the founders of analytic philosophy, at first blush Russell sounds like a dry guy. Yet his life was anything but dull. Plagued by bouts of terrible depression as a young man, Russell learned to cultivate a zest for life. This heavy-drinking, pipe-smoking professor was notorious for having affairs with his friends’ wives. He rejected organized religion with his famous essay “Why I Am Not a Christian,” but nonetheless had a passion for social justice, flirting with runs for political office and doing jail time for political protest, that last time at age 94. Notably, Russell was a leading intellectual voice against the war in Vietnam.

9. Michel Foucault, the Marilyn Manson of Philosophy

Always the outsider, Foucault (1926-1984) was the voice of the marginalized and oppressed, notably as a supporter of an inspiration for the Paris student uprisings of 1968.

Making use of Nietzsche’s insights on the nature of power and the method of historical investigation and exposure known as genealogy, Foucault challenged the legitimacy of dominant cultural structures. Suspicious of institutions, in works such as Madness and Civilization, The Birth of the Clinic, and Discipline and Punish, Foucault called for the abolition of prisons and asylums.

Himself a homosexual, Foucault challenged our idea of what is normal in The History of Sexuality. As a visiting professor at Berkeley, Foucault frequented the San Francisco bathhouses and developed a passion for S&M. Though he kept his disease a private matter, he was the first (and to date only) major philosopher to die of AIDS.

Bonus: Pure Genius – Thales of Miletus

Thales of Miletus (ca. 624-546 BCE), the first Western philosopher, set the standard for absentminded professors to come. Lost in thought, gazing at the sky, Thales fell into a well.

Ridiculed as an impractical dreamer, Thales set out to show that philosophers could do anything they set their minds to, including amassing wealth. One winter, using his knowledge of meteorology and astronomy, Thales predicted a bumper olive crop for the coming season. He cornered the market on olive presses in Miletus and made a fortune when the olive harvest met his expectations.

Remarkably, Thales predicted the solar eclipse of 585 BCE. He also measured the height of the Egyptian pyramids using their shadows. Thales is perhaps best known for arguing that water is the basic source element, that ultimately all things are made of water. He also argued that “all things are full of gods and have a share of soul,” a poetic rendering of the insight confirmed by much later science that all matter is always in motion.

From mental_floss' book Condensed Knowledge: A deliciously Irreverent Guide to Feeling Smart Again, published in Neatorama with permission. Original article "Behind the Philosophy: Bad Boys of Thought" written by William Irwin, associate professor of philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

William Irwin is the editor of The Matrix and Philosophy, The Simpsons and Philosophy, Seinfeld and Philosophy, and The Death and Resurrection of the Author? He is the author of Intentionalist Interpretation and the coauthor of Critical Thinking.

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Image credit: Indi.ca article "Who Will Rule Iraq? (Iraqi Power Players)"

[Update 3/14/07: Distribution of Sunni and Shia in the world. Larger pic: Wikimedia - Thanks Jonathan Soeder!]

The Dilemma: Despite hearing news about the Middle East every day, you still don't know Shia from shinola.

People You Can Impress: Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Jordanians, and TV talking heads.

The Quick Trick: The Shia believe that the early succession of power should have gone like the name of a very famous boxer: 1) Muhammad, 2) Ali.

The Explanation: Like Christianity, Islam is home to a spectrum of sects espousing different beliefs and practices. And just as Christianity can be divided into two large groups - Catholic and Protestant - from which other subsects have emerged, so too with Islam: Shia and Sunni.

Unlike Christianity, whose major split wouldn't occur for nearly sixteen centuries, Islam split almost immediately after the death of its founder, the Prophet Muhammad (circa 570 - 632 CE). The rift stems from a disagreement among Muslims over who was the rightful successor to Muhammad.

After the prophet's death on June 8, 632, a gathering of his followers met at Medina and proclaimed Abu Bakr (kinsman, companion, and early convert of Muhammad) caliph, or political leader. The claim stemmed from his close relationship with Muhammad, and the fact that Muhammad had asked Abu Bakr to lead prayers when too ill to do so himself. Those who recognize Abu Bakr and his three immediate successors, called the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, are referred to as Sunni Muslims, and today almost 90 percent of Muslims worldwide fall into this category.

One group of followers, however, refused to accept Abu Bakr. These Rafidi ("Refusers") supported the claim of Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's cousin (and son-in-law). The claim is based on a sermon the Prophet had given at Ghadir Khum, in which Muhammad referred to Ali as mawla, which some translate as "master." Ali's supporter called themselves Shiat Ali (the Party of Ali), though today they are known as simply Shia. Ali did eventually ascend as the fourth caliph. To Sunni, he is the last of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs. But to Shias, he is the first caliph and, more important, the first Imam - a word Shia Muslims use to refer to the person chosen leader of all the faithful.

While they and the Sunnis both revere the Koran, they accept different hadiths (oral traditions), so their laws are different. Many Shias, for example, allow temporary marriage. Shias also recognize esteemed imams as supreme expert on Islamic law, called Ayatollahs or, for the really big guys, Grand Ayatollahs. As for the locations where Shias have a significant Muslim majority, there are really only two: Iraq and Iran.

Much is made of the differences between Shias and Sunnis, but almost all the violence between them in the past 50 years has been caused, directly or indirectly, by Saddam Hussein - a nominal Sunni who by his own admission was never religious.

The article above was reprinted from the mental_floss book "What's the Difference?" with permission.

Monet? Manet? Who can even tell the difference? Well, with the help of the newest mental_floss tome, you can! ... mental_floss gives you all the tips and tricks to have you sounding like a genius.

The Kiss (c. 1907) by Gustav Klimt

No one really knows where the first smooch came from. One less-than-romantic theory suggests it began with ancient mothers passing chewed-up food to babies, which is 1) not sexy, and 2) gross. And kissing isn’t universal: People in Japan and Siberia only started kissing relatively recently, and some sub-Saharan African societies still don’t do it.

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A thousand years ago, ceremonial kisses were much more common than today. There was the holy kiss of peace, exchanged to symbolize unity in Christ; the kiss of veneration, bestowed on holy objects; you even got a kiss when you received an academic degree. By 18th century, however, much of that ceremonial pecking had been replaced by handshakes, oaths, and written documents. One ritual kiss is still as popular as ever: that of couples sealing their marriage vows.

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The erotic significance of the kiss didn’t come dominant in Europe until the 17th century. Not coincidentally, that was around the same time that dentists in France first promoted the use of toothbrushes. (Yes, the French were on the cutting edge of dental hygiene!) Before toothbrushes, the average European mouth was such a grim place that 16th-century maids often carried clove-studded apples when courting, insisting their suitors take a bite before attempting a kiss.

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German psychology professor Onur Güntürkün spent two years watching people make out in public parks and airports, eventually observing 124 “scientifically valid” kisses. He concluded that people are twice as likely to tilt their heads to the right when kissing than to the left. What’s the deal? Turns out our kissing proclivities are determined way in advance of the junior prom: According to Güntürkün, the direction you turn your head while in the womb will likely be the direction you tilt your head when kissing.

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Kissing has been banned repeatedly. Roman emperor Tiberius outlawed kissing in public ceremonies, hoping it would help curb the spread of herpes. In 16th-century Naples kissing was punishable by death, and in 1439 Henry VI banned it to combat the plague.

In 2004, Indonesia passed laws that ban not only public nudity, erotic dancing, and “sex parties,” but also punish public kissing with up to five years in prison. Flashing carries a stiff penalty, too: “I see London, I see France …” but if Indonesian police see your underpants, you could be fined up to $25,000 …

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Behind the Kiss: Famous Silver Screen Smooches Revealed

Gone with the Wind
While it’s probably the most famous kiss in movie history – Rhett kisses Scarlett fiercely, then carries her, protesting, up a grand staircase to bed – Vivien Leigh’s ability to keep it together was astounding. According to Hollywood insiders, Clark Gable’s halitosis on the set was so bad, Leigh didn’t want to kiss him at all!

You’re in the Army Now
Not to be confused with the 1994 Pauly Shore film of similar name, this 1941 flick holds the record for the longest unbroken kiss in Hollywood history. So, how long is almost too long for Hollywood? Jane Wyman and Regis Toomey locked lips for a good three minutes and five seconds.

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At 48 minutes, Andy Warhol’s experimental film is easily the longest picture about kissing: It consists of one static shot, twelve real-life couples, four minutes each. And while Warhol’s weird, obsessive focus is almost unwatchable, we’re still waiting for his sequel, Second Base.

The article above, from mental_floss' book Scatterbrained. is published in Neatorama with permission.

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The Dilemma: You're reading a document that's riddled with needless, pretentious Latin abbreviations (a legal brief, e.g., or mental_floss's exploration of differences, i.e., this book), but your year of high school Latin has been obscured by the fog of memory.

People You Can Impress: Roman emperors, lawyers, and grammar nerds.

The Quick Trick: E.g. means "for example"; i.e. means "that is." We at mental_floss remember this simply by employing Valley Girl speak. Where a fancypants Latinist would use e.g., a Valley Girl would use "like." And where the Latinist uses i.e., the Valley girl goes with "I mean." Like: "I love going out with Todd. He has, like, a really nice car. I mean, it cost a lot of money."

The Explanation: We will never understand why English abbreviations like BRB and LOL are derided as lazy, while Latin abbreviations are seen as the height of class. But now and again, it just sounds better to spice things up with a little dead language, and since Greek and Sanskrit both use unfamiliar alphabets, Latin's your best bet.

E.g. is short for exempli gratia, which literally means "by grace of example." I.e. is more straightforward: id est means "that is." The confusion stems from the fact that both abbreviations seek to clarify or focus a broad proposition, but e.g. is followed by a specific example, whereas i.e. is followed by a restatement.

Now that you know your i.e. from your e.g., we hereby provide a guide to other Latin abbreviations and phrases that some people use, even though the English language has already stolen all the Latin words it needs.

Other Helpful Latin Abbreviations:

C.f.: Often misused to mean "see, for instance," c.f. is actually short for confer. Confer is the imperative of conferre and means "compare" in Latin even though it means no such thing in English. Just remember c.f. should be used in English only to mean "compare with."

Etc.: Literally, "and the rest," etc. (the abbreviation of etcetera) indicates that the list it follows is a partial. For that reason, it's redundant, and therefore poor grammar, to say, "I love hair metal; e.g. Whitesnake, Poison, Damn Yankees, etc.," since the "for example" immediately makes it clear that the list is partial.

QED: An abbreviation for quod erat demonstradum that means "which was to be demonstrated." These days, QED generally means "Look, Mom, I proved it!" Mathematicians sometimes still end their proofs with "QED," and you sometimes hear lawyers say it, because laywers will say absolutely anything in Latin.

The article above was reprinted from the mental_floss book "What's the Difference?" with permission.

Monet? Manet? Who can even tell the difference? Well, with the help of the newest mental_floss tome, you can! ... mental_floss gives you all the tips and tricks to have you sounding like a genius.

The article above is reprinted from the March - April 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine (excellent issue! Get it at the bookstore), featured on Neatorama in partnership with mental_floss.

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In the dreary monotony of daily life, the best most of us can hope for is a promotion and a 3% raise. But a small subset of the human population dreams big – of bloody coups and secret torture chambers, personality cults and absolute power. Frankly, it’s enough to turn us off ambition entirely. Just imagine if Idi Amin had remained an assistant cook in the British colonial army. Or if these folks hadn’t thought to quit their day jobs.

1. Pol Pot, the Frustrated Teacher

Before he became a world-famous war criminal, Pol Pot was named Saloth Sar. As a young man, Sar studied carpentry and radio engineering, but proved a poor student so he became – what else? – a teacher. (And you thought your classrooms were scary.) From 1954 to 1963, Sar taught at a private school in Phnom Penh before being forced out because of ties to communism.

Ever fond of alliteration, Saloth Sar became Pol Pot and devoted himself full-time to Cambodia’s Communist Party, eventually becoming the party’s leader, and by 1975, his Khmer Rouge guerrilla army had overthrown the same government that once fired him.

In his four years of rule, Pot killed more than a million Cambodians. When the Vietnamese came to the rescue and invaded Cambodia in 1979, Pot retreated to the jungle, though he continued to orchestrate guerilla attacks until his arrest in 1997.

2. Hitler, the Frustrated Painter

As a child, Adolf Hitler attended a monastery school and harbored dreams of becoming a priest, but he dropped out after his father’s death in 1903.

By then, Hitler had a new career in mind: professional artist. And though the Führer’s precise but emotionless landscapes showed moderate promise, he was rejected twice from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. Bitter, poor, and lonely, young Adolf moved between boardinghouses and hostels, earning a meager living painting postcards.

Oddly enough, he might have been just another failed artist had it not been for World War I. Turning in his paintbrush for a pistol, Hitler volunteered as a runner for the German army. Turns out he enjoyed that world war so much that, a few decades later, he decided to start another one.

3. Mussolini, the Frustrated Author

Many dictators were also authors. Stalin wrote scintillating screeds like Building Collective Farms; Mao’s Little Red Book is considered to be the second-best-selling book of all time; and Hitler’s Mein Kampf made him a millionaire. Even Saddam Hussein found a little time to pen two horrible bodice-rippers while performing his duties as president of Iraq.

But the most famous dictatorial romance is The Cardinal’s Mistress, written by Benito Mussolini. Before becoming the world’s first fascist dictator, Mussolini worked for a socialist paper, Il Popolo d’Italia, for which he wrote a serial later published as a novel.

The Cardinal’s Mistress tells the tragic story of, you guessed it, a 17th-century cardinal and his mistress. And boy is it bad. It’s the sort of book where “terrible groan[s] burst forth from” characters’ breasts, and characters ask one another to “cast a ray of your light into my darkened soul.” No wonder Il Duce gave up his day job.

4. Papa Doc, the Frustrated Doctor

Unlike Doc Holliday (brilliant gunfighter and amateur dentist) and Elmer Fudd (inept gunfighter known to Bugs Bunny as Doc), François “Papa Doc” Duvalier was, in fact, a doctor – although we can only imagine his bedside manner.

Favoring hypocrisy to the Hippocratic Oath, the dangerous dictator was first a physician in Port-au-Prince for nearly a decade before immersing himself in politics full-time in 1943.

Even more surprising, he actually rose to power in a legitimately democratic election. And though he was voted in as president in 1957, Duvalier promptly showed his gratitude to the Haitian nation by killing anyone who expressed the slightest opposition to his government. By the mid-1960s, Duvalier had established himself not only as President for Life but also as a quasi-divine manifestation of Haiti’s greatest (he claimed to have supernatural powers; Papa Doc even said he placed a curse on John F. Kennedy that resulted in Kennedy’s assassination).

Incidentally, his son, “Baby Doc” Duvalier, who ruled from Papa Doc’s death in 1971 until 1986, was not a doctor. Just a dictator.

5. Castro, the Angry Ballplayer?

Persistent rumors would have you believe that old Fidel was a talented baseball player who once tried out for a major-league team in America … which is completely untrue.

The fact is, Castro did play a little ball back in school: he seems to have been the losing pitcher in a 1946 intramural game between the University of Havana’s business and law schools. But the point there is that he was in law school not so much to win ball games as to study law.

Castro graduated and practiced in Havana between 1950 and 1952, when he failed miserably in his first attempted coup d’état. After a brief stint in prison and a few years exiled in Mexico and the United States, Castro and his family finally took control of Cuba in 1959. Just goes to show you, there’s more to life than sports!

From mental_floss' book Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History's Naughtiest Bits, published in Neatorama with permission.

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When Victor Hugo [wiki], the famous author of great tomes such as Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, ran into a writer's block, he concocted a unique scheme to force himself to write: he had his servant take all of his clothes away for the day and leave his own nude self with only pen and paper, so he'd have nothing to do but sit down and write.

Mystery writer Agatha Christie [wiki], whose books have been translated in 40 languages and outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, liked to write anywhere, including in the bathtub!

Sources: A Blank Page by Sam Elmore, In The Nude by So Many Books, Literary Life and Other Curiosities by Robert Hendrickson, Dressing to Write by Bibi's Beat.