Jim Nolan's Blog

Buffalo Bills AFL Stationary

Sent to me by my friend Harley Spiller. I didn't notice it right away, but the oval is a football. The Bills won AFL championships in 1964 and 1965, beating the San Diego Chargers both times. Lou Saban was the Bills' coach.

Sympathy for Gríma Wormtongue

It starts with his first name

In the J.R.R. Tolkien novels and Peter Jackson films of The Lord of the Rings, Gríma Wormtongue is portrayed as a devious, sniveling bad guy, with greasy dark hair and an all-around bad attitude.

By far, he’s my favorite character.

I find it easy to sympathize with him. Let’s start with his last name. It couldn’t have been easy growing up a Wormtongue. On the mailbox at the foot of the driveway, there’s a big “Wormtongue” written on the side. People ride their horses by it every day. I’m not sure it sets up a notion in visitors’ minds that this is a family to be trusted. “Let’s get Wormtongue’s thoughts on it,” is probably a question that never got asked. No wonder he went into the spy and betrayal business.

I can imagine the poor guy trying to mumble his name to folks he just met. “Wait, what did you say your last name was again?

You know he never went James Bond with it. “Wormtongue. Gríma Wormtongue.”

Also, the poor guy was in love with the beautiful Éowyn, the king’s niece. Unlike him, she had really nice hair, like she just stepped out of a L’Oréal shampoo commercial. In the unlikely case they did end up getting hitched, I’m guessing she would not have taken his last name. Éowyn Wormtongue. Nah.

In the movies, actor Brad Dourif plays poor Gríma. While he does an excellent job, you should know he’s the same actor who voices the serial-murderer doll Chucky in the “Child’s Play” movies. I mean, c’mon. Give the character a break.

I would have cast Tom Hanks in the role.

Gríma comes to a bad end in the books and movies. In the books, it’s hinted that he not only killed Lotho Sackville-Baggins, but may have eaten him for good measure. Well, we all make mistakes. Lotho’s nickname, by the way, was “Lotho Pimple.” So he had challenges of his own. In the luxury of hindsight, Gríma should have bonded with Lotho, rather than eaten him.

Gríma comes to a grisly end himself, getting killed by hobbit arrows after finally killing the evil wizard Saruman. In the movie version, he stabs Saruman with a knife in the tower Orthanc, only be be shot by the somewhat dim-witted elf Legolas. They’re all a little trigger-happy where Gríma is concerned.

I can only hope that he was eventually recognized as the hero he was for finally offing his tormentor and doing the denizens of Middle Earth a big favor. I hope they buried him in some leafy Shire spot with a handsome tombstone.

It would be nice if they left his last name off it.

Squirrels Gone Wild

Forgoing acorns, they bite the Big Apple. 

Photo by Caleb Martin on Unsplash

Squirrels have quickly gone from our country’s most unusual airline service animal to the biggest menace to society since murder hornets.

In the Queens, NY neighborhood of Rego Park, they have been attacking residents and, rudely, biting them. Even if these people had coated themselves in a mixture of suet and sunflower seeds, it’s unusual behavior for squirrels. Naturalists are baffled—even David Attenborough has wisely stayed above the fray. I thought I’d clear things up , based on a lifetime of backyard squirrel observation. Bird feeders have been my Gombe.

I have two theories. The first is a simple one, you’ve probably already come up with it yourself. These are New York City squirrels. They have an attitude. But these squirrels live in Queens, so they they have a big acorn on their shoulders.

Manhattan is the most glamorous borough, Brooklyn, the hippest, the Bronx, the toughest, and Staten Island is where the Wu-Tang Clan is from.

Queens, maybe because its many charms are frequently overlooked, has become the most pugnacious borough, in any of the 138 languages spoken there. Archie Bunker lived in Queens. As did our former president and current governor. Why should the squirrels behave differently from any of the other locals?

Also, Queens has the best food, and the squirrels are getting what, seeds? Seeds they have to scrounge from feeders meant for birds? What makes birds so special? Do they plant acorns that grow into mighty oaks? No. They sit in the oak trees and flit about. Hardly a constructive use of time. You think they thank the squirrels for their leafy habitat? Pffft.

I won’t even get into birds’ relaxed sanitary behavior, but it’s the reason many of us wear hats in the city.

Is there an Audubon Society for squirrels? I’m not aware of any popular rodent clubs. Or, for that matter, rodent watchers, except involuntarily in the subways. At least Pizza Rat got something good to eat.

It may be a better question to ask why the squirrels haven’t been acting like this previously. They have a lot of beefs.

In due time, they’ll probably chill out and constrain themselves to just insulting dogs from the safety of a high branch. This is what squirrels enjoy doing all over the country, and it’s not difficult to imagine that Queens squirrels have a special knack for it.

At least they’ll be using their words this time.

 

 

 

Wine Cartoon by Isabella Bannerman

Another great one by Isabella Bannerman (my wife) for Six Chix. I really love the handwriting and grapes and cheese illustrations. 

Today's Sunday Bannerman Six Chix cartoon

There's nothing charming about this prince.

The Monty Hall Problem Is My Problem

Behind curtain #1 is a devilish math test

Monty Hall, the late host of “Let’s Make a Deal,” may not be the first person who comes to mind as someone associated with complicated probability theory. But to mathematicians, he’s as well known as Stephen Hawking, Katherine Johnson, or even the jerk responsible for so many unfortunate results on my geometry tests: Euclid.

This fame derives from the “Monty Hall Problem.” My son told me, “anyone with a passing interest in math has heard of it.”

Naturally, I hadn’t heard of it.

But Monty Hall will be known for the Monty Hall Problem long after his TV show is forgotten, like Arnold Palmer will be known as a drink, not a golfer.

It’s a problem to explain the Problem, but I’ll try. In “Let’s Make a Deal,” contestants are asked to choose what’s behind one of three curtains. Behind one of them, there’s a big prize. Behind the other two, a clunker, often a goat.

However, before he would reveal whether you chose correctly or not, Monty would reveal what was behind one of the other curtains that was not the new Ford Mustang convertible or trip to fabulous Puerto Vallarta. And then he’d ask you if you wanted to stay with your choice, or switch to the other remaining curtain.

He’s trying to trick you, right? With two curtains remaining, the odds are obviously 50/50. Why change and be embarrassed when the goat appears?

Here’s why. Because if you do change, you have a two-in-three chance of winning. And that is what makes people’s head explode, mine included.

How can this possibly be correct?

Apparently, and I say apparently because I don’t fully understand it, it’s because Monty knows what’s behind each door. And he’s removing a goat for you. So if you stay, you have your original one in three odds. If you change, acting on that new information, your odds improve considerably.

That’s the best I can do, people. I dropped math after the 10th grade.

By the way, no one understood the Monty Hall Problem better than Monty Hall. He surely liked math. He had a B.S. degree in chemistry and zoology. Monty and a partner got rich developing and producing “Let’s Make a Deal,” so at a minimum he got good at counting.

Beyond being smart, he was nice—Canadian, like Alex Trebek—and helped raise over a billion dollars for charity.

Hall didn’t see the problem from a purely mathematical standpoint, because he knew he didn’t always play by “the rules.” He could make or not make the offer to switch depending on how he was feeling that day. It kept things fresh, and he didn’t have a problem with that, or with the math behind knowing which curtain to pick.

After all, “Let’s Make a Deal” was all about math. What are the odds you can do better by trading for something else? If you had a head for figures, you could make out pretty well on that show, then and now.

My best case scenario? I wind up with a goat.