Rambles

• PCL Linkdump has a post on General Tire's jingle Sooner or later, you'll own Generals. It seemed like I was always hearing this jingle on the radio out in San Francisco in the 1970's. (That is, when I wasn't hearing "Matthew's TV & Stereo City, 6400 Mission Street, Top of the Hill, Daly City!" ) As it turns out, General Tire owned radio station KFRC-AM in San Francisco, which I listened to a lot (one of the 5 pre-sets on my AM car radio). Another 30-year-old minor mystery solved.
• If you accidentally hooked up an electric chair backwards to reverse polarity, would you inadvertently give the condemned man immortality instead of killing him?
• James T. Harris quotes Chesterton: “There is a real sin in being as bad as your society; but it is not the same sin as that of being deliberately worse than your society.”

Comments

[triticale]

Electric chairs use alternating current. Back when Edison was holding out for direct current, he promoted this fact as evidence AC is unsafe. Electrocutions played a big part in the publicity war between Edison and Westinghouse.