How much total money – fake money – is provided in a standard Monopoly game? And what Word is the same in every world language. Hear the answers on the Off Ramp with Bob & Marcia Smith. (Photo: John Morgan Wikimedia Commons)
Bob and Marcia discussed various pop culture and historical phenomena, including Monopoly, GI Joe, Ouija boards, and smell and sensory perception. Bob provided interesting facts and historical context, while Marcia added cultural significance and pop culture references. They explored the origins and evolution of these topics, their cultural impact, and the commonalities and differences between related concepts. Marcia shared insights on the world of smell, revealing her expertise in the field, while Bob questioned her findings, showcasing his curiosity and interest in the subject.
Outline
Monopoly money and game history.
- Monopoly games provide $15,140 in fake money, with variations in newer editions.
Language, culture, and geography.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the most universally understood term in the world, which is “ha” or “uh-huh,” according to a study by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of psycho linguistics.
- Marcia and Bob incorrectly answer a question about how long it would take for news of a bright star burning out to reach Earth, with Marcia providing the correct answer of 8.6 years.
- Bob Smith mentions a unique physical feature of GI Joe action figures, which is the deliberate casting of thumbnails on the inside of the hand instead of the outside.
- Marcia Smith shares a fascinating fact that 90% of the world’s population lives above the equator, according to mapmaker Bill Rankin.
Word origins and automation impact.
- Dr. Seuss coined the term “nerd” in his 1950 book “If I Ran the Zoo.”
- Marcia Smith reveals that only one occupation has been completely eliminated by automation since 1950: elevator operator.
Smell, cheese, dogs, and Sherlock Holmes.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the world’s most dangerous cheese, kassu marzu, which is maggot-infested and banned due to potential health risks.
- Dogs have 50 million olfactory receptors, while elephants have the most with an unspecified number.
- Marcia Smith mentions Crayola crayons as a familiar scent that lowers blood pressure.
US presidents, slinkies, and Ouija boards.
- Marcia Smith shares interesting facts about former presidents, including Ronald Reagan’s role as president of a labor union and Herbert Hoover’s use of Chinese to communicate with his wife in the White House.
- Bob Smith asks questions and provides additional information, including the length of a standard slinky and the number of coil turns required to stretch it out 63 feet.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the origins of the Ouija board, its name, and its cultural significance in pop culture.
Dean Martin, George Lucas, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss Kid Crochet, a singer from the 20s who was also a boxer, and how his name was originally back rub, the original name of Google.
- Marcia Smith asks Bob Smith if he knows Dean Martin, and Bob replies that he does, and that Kid Crochet was Dean Martin’s real name.
- Marcia and Bob discuss actors who played Robin Hood, a computer game company named Atari, and George Lucas’s lawsuit against Ronald Reagan’s administration.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss the origins of the first United States Chamber of Commerce, which was granted a royal charter by King George III in 1770.
Bob Smith 0:00
How much total money fake money is provided in a standard Monopoly game? And
Marcia Smith 0:06
what one word is the same in every language around the world?
Bob Smith 0:10
answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith
Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down. Steer clear of crazy take a side road to Saturday and get some perspective on life. Well, Marcia, this will give you perspective how much money fake money is provided in a standard Monopoly game. Now you’re buying railroads, you’re buying houses
Marcia Smith 0:51
and streets? Yeah, yeah. A million dollars.
Bob Smith 0:56
million dollars. Like 2 million? No, you know, it’s only 15,100 $15,140 If you have a game that was produced before 2008 And if you have a newer game from 2008 on, you have $20,580 Now remember, it came out in the Great Depression so that was a lot of money back.
Marcia Smith 1:24
What are your pay for a railroad about $1,000
Bob Smith 1:27
apparently now wow. It’s deadly. Did you know this real money was slipped into packs of play money smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during World War Two to help Allied soldiers who might escape these these games were delivered by the Red Cross and the British intelligence in addition to the usual trinkets you had in there, they had a metal file a compass and maps printed on silk silk because didn’t make any noise and you could fold it very tightly. Waddington. That’s the company that also did the monopoly games. They had invented printing on silk for theater programs to keep the theater programs quiet during performances. So they just transferred that technology to the maps of safe houses near the prison camps. You’re kidding. Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? Plus, they had real French German and Italian money hidden underneath the fake money of the game.
Marcia Smith 2:19
Wow, that is very interesting. Talking about POW camp. Yeah. Oh, wow. All right. Okay, Bob, what one word is the same in every language around the world? Yes.
Bob Smith 2:30
No, the word would be a u h. Meaning. You know, it’s one of those gestures. It’s something like that, isn’t it?
Marcia Smith 2:38
It’s something like, Uh huh. Okay. You got half of it there. Oh, you said Ah ha, ha, it’s Ha, issue. Ah, yeah. Oh, really. According to scientists from the Max Planck Institute of psycho linguistics, which I check in with periodically, there is only one word in existence. That’s the same in every language. The word is hard. Recording informal language across five continents. The scientists said that Ha is the most universally understood term in the world. According to the study, he is the only word capable of stating that there is a problem with what is being said. There is no other word capable of filling its place universally, ah, in
Bob Smith 3:21
every language. Hmm. I didn’t get that. That’s surprising. So it has different meanings, then. Ha,
Marcia Smith 3:27
ha, ha.
Bob Smith 3:30
Okay. Hmm. We had a question that came up last week.
Marcia Smith 3:36
Oh, you’re saying Marcia had a question. And more than one rapper has informed us that we were not correct. So here’s the question. The brightest star in our sky is called Sirius, which is closer than most at 8.6. light years away. If it burned out tomorrow, Bob, how long would it take us to know about it? My answer
Bob Smith 3:59
to that was I was thinking, how long would it take to get there? Because you can’t travel at light speed, you know, and that’s the speed of lights very fast. So I said like 100 or 150 years? And you said no, it’s 10 years. And neither one of us were right. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 4:14
I had a decade and I cannot for the life of me find out the source of that. So what is the answer Marsh? Well, as people have told me, it says it in the question. 8.6 years,
Bob Smith 4:26
that’s how fast that’s how long it takes light to travel. So if the light went out, we would know 8.6 years after it went out. So that’s the answer we should have given? Yes. Okay. Okay. So we apologize. No, you it’s good that people reacted to that they
Marcia Smith 4:41
listen, yeah, that tells you something telling us we’re wrong. And that’s okay, that shows people are listening. Well, here’s an
Bob Smith 4:49
interesting one. Okay. Okay. Now, this is another question on a toy. What is the unique physical feature of a GI Joe that doubles as a trade Mark.
Marcia Smith 5:00
Okay,
Bob Smith 5:02
there’s a physical feature that is very unique to GI Joe that doubles as a trademark of that doll. Or I’m sorry, the action figure. They never call it a doll.
Marcia Smith 5:12
No, no, because it’s not manly. Yes. Right. It’s, well, I assume there’s a G on his uniform somewhere. No, no, it isn’t. I don’t know, then this is interesting.
Bob Smith 5:22
I’ve never really examined a GI Joe doll. But it’s thumbnails are deliberately cast on the inside, instead of the outside of the hand. So it’s, like you saw GI Joe under the hand would be the fingernails. And that’s the trademark. Well, that gave the action figure and easily identifiable characteristic and a doubled as a trademark. And it was, you know, if you copy that you obviously copied our action figure. Hmm. So again, the thumbnails are deliberately cast on the inside instead of the outside of the hand. very distinctive feature of GI Joe. Well, that’s sunlight. And I can give you my source that comes from who knew a book by David Hoffman. Okay,
Marcia Smith 6:03
here’s something you’ll find curious. What percentage of the world’s population lives in the northern hemisphere? Give me a percentage, and
Bob Smith 6:13
that’s around the world, not the northern hemisphere of the Americas but our world. I would say most of the population of the Earth lives in the northern hemisphere, would you?
Marcia Smith 6:22
Am I wrong? How much would you say? What percentage 60%?
Bob Smith 6:27
That’s okay. 60 to 70% of the world, because that’s where almost all the industrialized world is, you know, there’s not too many factories, anything in the below except places like Australia, you know, New Zealand, that area?
Marcia Smith 6:40
And the answer is 90%. Which is hard to Wow.
Bob Smith 6:44
90% of the world’s population lives above the equator then
Marcia Smith 6:47
correct. According to mapmaker. Bill Rankin, wow. He also says that half of all earthlings live north of the 27th parallel. For perspective, Chicago is at 41 north, so it’s well below that. 27 parallel, isn’t that fascinating?
Bob Smith 7:05
Again, it’s like 90% of the world’s population lives above the equator. Wow. Okay. This is a question about an author. Okay. All right. What author is credited with inventing the word nerd?
Marcia Smith 7:24
What century?
Bob Smith 7:25
It’s a 20th century
Marcia Smith 7:27
author kind of figured, ah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t a playwright. Was
Bob Smith 7:33
it? No. Well, no.
Marcia Smith 7:37
Because, okay, I don’t know. Things that
Bob Smith 7:39
he wrote became TV shows and became specials, and became probably
Marcia Smith 7:44
displays was it what’s his name? Who Marsh? I can see him the guy with the little hat on he was I was wearing the little bolt hat. You know, what’s his name? Dr. Seuss, Marsh? No, that’s not who he didn’t wear it with.
Bob Smith 7:57
That’s the answer. I’m sorry. Really? He
Marcia Smith 7:59
came up with nerd. Yes.
Bob Smith 8:01
Okay came from his book. If I ran the zoo, that’s the first noted occurrence of that word, and that dates from 1950. And the books Narrator lists various imaginary creatures he hoped would keep in the zoo, if he were allowed to run it, whatever the objections other people might raise. And here’s the sentence it came from. And then just to show them, I’ll sail to Katroo and bring back and it could be a preAP and a Pru a nickel, a nerd and a sere sucker too. And that’s the first sentence that ever had the word nerd. Yeah. And nerdy in his case was a small humanoid like creature that looked comically
Marcia Smith 8:40
angry. Wow. Wonder how it got the definition it does today.
Bob Smith 8:44
I don’t know. This is the next reference. In 1951, October 8. In Detroit, someone who once would have been called a drip or a square is now regrettably, a nerd or in a less severe case, a scurf. So these are all these terms that were coming out about teenagers in the 50s. But nerd was one that stuff from Dr. Seuss.
Marcia Smith 9:06
Okay. This you’ll also like Bob, according to a study done by a Harvard economist, James Besant. What is the only occupation completely eliminated by automation? Since 1950, the only organizationally one that has been completely eliminated. He did a complete comparison of the 1950 census to the 2010 census, which is 60 years. And that’s the only job that wasn’t there anymore. Since 1950.
Bob Smith 9:38
Wow, that’s I think there’d be a lot of them been replaced by automation. Can you give me any other clues on that?
Marcia Smith 9:45
Yeah, you should know this. Well,
Bob Smith 9:48
thank you. That’s very helpful. Boy, was that helpful? Well, I know the answer now. Okay.
Marcia Smith 9:54
elevator operator. Oh, some have some robots have replaced Some jobs, but it’s the only job that wasn’t there anymore.
Bob Smith 10:03
It took to happen. But by 2010 they were wasn’t on the list anymore. Wow. That’s, that’s fascinating. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 10:10
It’s sort of said to i Oh, still like that. Yeah. You had a little chat when you are with somebody. Yeah. If they had a good sense of humor was fun. If not, it wasn’t.
Bob Smith 10:19
They were actually very nice. You know, those people always pleasant. Really? Imagine all the people they saw. Yeah. Okay, Marcia, out of 4000 species of flowers. How many actually give off a pleasant smell?
Marcia Smith 10:35
How many out of 4000? I’ll say 1812.
Bob Smith 10:42
It’s actually less than that. According to a study that was done a number of years ago survey that showed there are 4000 species of flowers. But of those only 401 out of 10 gave off a pleasant smell. The same survey showed that flowers with white or cream colored petals gave off the most perfume really? Yeah.
Marcia Smith 11:02
Interesting. Lilies. Yeah, like Easter lilies. Okay, from beautiful smelling flowers to stinky cheese. I don’t know if it’s thinking
Bob Smith 11:12
this is an aroma question. Another aroma question. Okay, new categories is, you know, aromas per 10. Bill we live.
Marcia Smith 11:21
What is the world’s most dangerous cheese?
Bob Smith 11:24
A Dangerous, dangerous cheese? What? In what way? Is it dangerous?
Marcia Smith 11:29
potentially dangerous,
Bob Smith 11:31
potentially dangerous? Yes. Well, I could say a glass of water is potentially dangerous because I might drown. Well, that’s
Marcia Smith 11:37
true. But this is CNN reports on this cheese. It’s called kassu marzu. And
Bob Smith 11:43
what is wrong with kassu? Mazu? Well, there’s nothing rather than the name the
Marcia Smith 11:47
Italian shepherds of Sardinia produce this marvelous cheese. But it’s maggot infested. And that’s to hear it that in 2009, the Guinness Book of World Records proclaimed it as the most dangerous cheese. The cheese is banned from commercial sale because the maggots may form micro perforations in the intestines of the consumer. Although so far, allegedly no deaths have been linked to it. There aren’t that many people that eat it. The gastro gnomes love it though and they’ve say they will continue enjoying the creamy, infested and spicy cheese. It has an aftertaste, a delicious aftertaste that lasts for hours. But
Bob Smith 12:33
that may be all the longer you live. I
Marcia Smith 12:35
know it’s creepy, but it’s a
Bob Smith 12:39
that’s that’s well here’s the story about aroma and smell. That’s a positive. Okay, now, just how sensitive are dogs in terms of their ability to smell and sniff? How many scent receptors does the average dog have any idea? Compared to human beings?
Marcia Smith 12:58
No,
Bob Smith 12:59
I’ll give you a hint. Human beings have 5 million oh five, 5 million, only 5 million. I
Marcia Smith 13:05
didn’t know we had that scent receptors. How
Bob Smith 13:07
many do dogs have?
Marcia Smith 13:08
They have? 50 million 300 million. Oh, wow.
Bob Smith 13:14
That’s why dogs have been trained to detect odors of drugs and explosives, cancer, malaria, diabetes and COVID-19. Yes,
Marcia Smith 13:23
I’ve heard that. Isn’t that fascinating? Yeah, they’re being
Bob Smith 13:26
trained to sniff out COVID 19 infections, including people without symptoms. First time dogs have ever been able to detect a viral disease. Yeah, it turns out one dog can screen 200 to 300 people a day and the cost to screen via dog is a fraction of those nasal swab tests. And NASCAR has used COVID-19 sniffing dogs to screen drivers mechanics and other employees at Atlanta’s motor speedway’s at Alabama Talladega Speedway and South Carolina’s Darlington raceway so they’re trained to sit in front of somebody who they can smell. There’s something wrong with this and then they do a nasal swab to that person is that that saves them from doing nasal swabs all over the place. Yeah, what an interesting
Marcia Smith 14:09
you know what even be better? An elephant?
Bob Smith 14:13
Elephant? Yeah,
Marcia Smith 14:14
they have the most receptors and don’t ask me how much off the top of my head. They have the strongest smell of any animal in the
Bob Smith 14:21
world. I just would feel it a little bit scary to have a big elephant’s trunk sniffing me
Marcia Smith 14:27
at the airport is an elephant can smell water from 12 miles away. Holy cow. Okay, now this is for you, Bob. And our fellow Sherlock Ian’s Okay, okay. All right. What are the only two Sherlock Holmes stories written with Sherlock and not Watson as narrator
Bob Smith 14:48
Oh, yeah. And this is the same author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but for some reason he wrote several without Watson and wasn’t it the engineers thumb? Wasn’t that one of them?
Marcia Smith 14:58
No, I’ll give you two hints. Okay, for the two stories all right, I’ll just say lepers and jellyfish. Oh,
Bob Smith 15:04
the blast soldier,
Marcia Smith 15:06
right? That’s one jellyfish. Oh,
Bob Smith 15:09
that’s the one about the beach. And what’s the name of that one?
Marcia Smith 15:13
Oh, why is my
Bob Smith 15:17
mane Lion’s Mane That’s right. Oh dear,
Marcia Smith 15:22
but yeah, otherwise it’s always Watson narrating it. Okay,
Bob Smith 15:25
I’ve got a question then we’ll take a break here. Okay, okay. Well, of all the things in your childhood, what is the one thing that you undoubtedly used as a kid that has been proven to lower blood pressure? If you sniff it as an adult? Wow, that’s weird. Well, it goes along with our enrollment questions here.
Marcia Smith 15:45
If you sniff it as an adult, lowers your blood pressure, I don’t know and evergreen tree tree Crayola crayons.
Bob Smith 15:53
Really Crayola Crayons the smell of Crayola Crayons is so familiar. They’re considered one of the 20 most recognizable sense by American adults. It’s so soothing that sniffing the crayons has been proven to lower blood pressure. Oh, the
Marcia Smith 16:09
memory makes you so calm, it lowers your blood pressure and brake takes you to another place in time. That’s very cool.
Bob Smith 16:16
And the other 20 recognizable cents by American adults include coffee and peanut butter. So those are two other ones that butter and Crayola cry
Marcia Smith 16:25
about coffee fresh smell.
Bob Smith 16:28
Hey, let’s take a break and get some coffee. Okay. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment. Okay, we’re here with more questions on today’s trivia, Marsha, what you got there?
Marcia Smith 16:43
This is a gimme for you. Okay, who was the only president who was a former president of a labor union? Ronald Reagan. That’s right.
Bob Smith 16:53
And what was the union Screen Actors Guild? That’s
Marcia Smith 16:55
right. He went before he was governor. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild,
Bob Smith 17:00
my union, the only union I’ve ever belonged
Marcia Smith 17:03
to. That’s right. That’s fact I wanted to give one make sure you got one right.
Bob Smith 17:09
I got more than one right in this show. Okay, go ahead. Okay, let me ask you this. Did you ever have a slinky?
Marcia Smith 17:14
Of course many, many. Oh, you
Bob Smith 17:16
had many Slinkys? What did you lose them or what I walk away from? Yeah, no. outstretched them like that. Maybe they went down the stairs and out the door? Yeah, connect them
Marcia Smith 17:25
to a doorknob and see how far I could walk away from it before. It’s
Bob Smith 17:31
really one of those kids have been up your slinky and ruined your slinky. I did and it never came back to the right shape. Okay, well, how long was a standard slinky? If you stretched it out? Well, this I should know. Right? I should know you just described doing this. 12 feet? No. If you actually stretched the wire out all the way
Marcia Smith 17:51
Oh, that’s right. I never was it because that takes a lot of strength to do that. So we’ll say 50 feet
Bob Smith 17:57
63 feet of wire. So that’s like from pitcher’s mound to home plate on a baseball field. You’d have to flatten 86 coil turns to do that, because that’s what each slinky has 86 coil turns and 63 feet of wire. That’s a lot of wire
Marcia Smith 18:13
that. Isn’t that interesting? Yeah. I think Well, anyway, Bob, the Hoover’s and the colleges. Okay, presidents. They were the only two presidential families that had their own way of preventing their conversations from being overheard by white house guests or staff.
Bob Smith 18:32
Oh, really? Yeah. What? Like a signal or something like they
Marcia Smith 18:36
do so that people didn’t know what they were talking about. So they wouldn’t be overheard by strangers?
Bob Smith 18:42
Did they have code words they used? No. Okay. Did they do hand signals or something
Marcia Smith 18:48
like that? That’s one of them sign language. The colleges talk to each other in sign language when they were in the White House, office and stuff. But the Hoover’s they took it a step farther they talk to each other in Chinese if anybody else was around Oh, kid. Yeah. You know, like, Herbert bring home a loaf of bread in Chinese? Well, I
Bob Smith 19:08
think the Secret Service would want to know if the President’s gonna go out to the market. That’s interesting. Well, you know, and he was a very famous person prior to being president. You know, he was a mining engineer. He had written books, and he was responsible for helping to feed Europe after World War One. He was the man in charge of the US program to help feed Europe like the Marshall Plan after World War Two. It’s a shame his presidency just didn’t, you know, it doesn’t have a good reputation because of the depression and everything. Yeah. I’m gonna go back to something we discussed one earlier show the Weegee board. And you were a Weegee board aficionado. I was mystic, Marcia, and you called yourself? Yes, sir. So where did the Ouija board get its name? And I pronounced it Ouija board because that’s how it’s actually yeah, we G it’s the jaw
Marcia Smith 19:57
we jaw and what was the question? How did it get had its name.
Bob Smith 20:01
What does the name mean? Weijia
Marcia Smith 20:03
I haven’t a clue.
Bob Smith 20:04
Oh you i? Yeah. JAOU is French for Yes, yes. And yah is German for yes. So it’s yes, yes in French and German. I’ll be that’s what the name means. Yes, in French and German. The board was patented in 1890. And it was a commercial version of the planchette boards or talking boards that were used by American spiritualists in the 1880s. I’ve got some interesting facts about Weegee boards in pop culture over the years. Okay, I think you’ll find interesting. So a century ago Emily Grant Hutchings claimed her 1917 novel, Jap heron, a novel written from the Ouija board. She said it was dictated by Mark Twain spirits Oh God, through Egypt board. Much of William Butler Yeats is later poetry was inspired by the Ouija board. He didn’t use one but his wife did that. That was interesting. Ouija boards have been featured in numerous movies over the past century, most famously in The Exorcist in 1970. And even Norman Rockwell did a painting of a couple using a Ouija board in 1920. I think I’ve seen that but it was kind of a flirtatious illustration. It’s the girl’s got her head thrown back like she’s having a seance and her fiance is lovingly looking at her across this week.
Marcia Smith 21:22
It was a rage back in the day and the 20s when I did it, there wasn’t a rage but it was woo woo woo Okay Bob what famous singer boxed under the name of kid crochet
Bob Smith 21:36
kid crochet. I knew that Bob Hope boxed under Paky East – that was his name as before he became a comedian. But Kid Crochet a singer? Famous is this in this century? The 21st century the 20th kid crochet kid somebody with kids. It’s not Kid Rock. Is it? No. Okay.
Marcia Smith 21:55
You’ll get it if I tell you his real name. Okay. Do you know Crochet Eddie?
Bob Smith 22:00
Oh, Dean Martin. Yes. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, Kid Crochet was his. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 22:05
He was a boxer as a teenager and that was his name. I thought that was pretty funny. Wow.
Bob Smith 22:11
That’s pretty cool. It
Marcia Smith 22:12
doesn’t sound very Italian tough.
Bob Smith 22:15
No, it doesn’t. He was always gonna go drunk. Yeah, that’s funny. Now he was from Youngstown, Ohio. That was a tough town. So he probably came up in a tough neighborhood and boxing was one of the things you did yourself. Yeah. Marsha, are you a computer expert? Yes. Oh, really? Okay, then. Tell me what BackRub is? BackRub it’s the original name of something to do with computers. backrub. It’s,
Marcia Smith 22:39
it’s I don’t know. It’s
Bob Smith 22:41
the original name of a search engine. Oh, is
Marcia Smith 22:44
it? Okay, well, search engine, not Google. Yes,
Bob Smith 22:48
Google. Yeah. It’s the original name of Google Backrub. Yeah, it began as a grad school research project at Stanford University. A lot of people know that. And Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they called the search engine back rub because the system could check back links on a website that is the first search engine that could rate a site based on how many people went to it. So they came up with a name back rub. Sean Anderson, who was another member of the team, and they were looking for a different name other than backrub. They said, What about Google because they do this for mathematics. But he accidentally misspelled G o o g, L E instead of Gogol. And there’s nobody using that word. So they changed the name of Google the mathematical term. Gee, oh, gee, Oh, l to the spelling we use today. Wow. So it was an accident. The spelling of that word was an accident. It’s my
Marcia Smith 23:41
favorite. For everything search engine, that’s for sure. Google,
Bob Smith 23:46
and it was originally called backrub. Wow.
Marcia Smith 23:48
What do Marlon Brando Mel Gibson, Clark Gable and Errol Flynn all have in common?
Bob Smith 23:55
Marlon Brando now Gibson, Errol Flynn Clark cable. Well, none of those people are using their real name and Errol
Marcia Smith 24:03
Flynn. I’ll give you a hint they all had the same role.
Bob Smith 24:07
All they all played Robin Hood. Now okay. I can’t
Marcia Smith 24:11
see. Being Robin Frankly, my dear.
Bob Smith 24:15
I don’t give an arrow. Marian made Marian what rule
Marcia Smith 24:20
frankly Mr. Christian. Oh, they all played Fletcher Christian. I didn’t really and Mel Gibson did that in Mutiny on the Bounty. So all those names again. Who were they Marlon Brando, Mel Gibson, Clark Gable and Errol Flynn. I think I saw everybody in it but not Mel Gibson.
Bob Smith 24:38
Yeah, but I know that Clark Gable and and obviously, Marlon Brando, I remember those two. Yeah. Brando
Marcia Smith 24:45
was really good in that. Okay, go ahead.
Bob Smith 24:48
Okay, what computer game business’s name was chosen specifically, so it would sound Japanese. This is a famous computer game company at one point In History Pokeyman No,
Marcia Smith 25:03
that’s not a starts
Bob Smith 25:03
with an A. An A Tari
Marcia Smith 25:10
Tari remember
Bob Smith 25:11
Atari? Yes I do. That was a company based in Northern California, but its founders named at Atari. They wanted their customers to think it was Japanese because that was back when the Japanese companies, Sony and Nintendo were the leaders in game electronics. Yeah, yeah. So they came up with that name, even though it was American. They wanted it to sound Japanese. Yeah, at the time. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 25:32
I’ll be darned. Yeah, kind of fun. Okay, last question. Why did George Lucas file a lawsuit against President Ronald Reagan’s administration? Because it had to do with Star Wars? Yes. Because Reagan and his people began using the term Star Wars to promote his computer controlled space defense program. And Lucas wanted to protect his film title and called it trademark infringement. He lost the battle. Okay, and I can now end with a bar joke. Okay. All right. Charles Dickens walks into a bar and orders a martini. And the bartender asks Oliver Twist.
Bob Smith 26:13
Oh, dear. God, and what’s the answer? I was always the kid that say, well, what’s the answer? Yeah, I’m
Marcia Smith 26:21
sure you were.
Bob Smith 26:22
And here’s an irony of US history. I don’t remember ever reading Who is the man who gave us the first United States Chamber of Commerce? Ah, well, he’s kind of an infamous character in American history. Early American history. Why
Marcia Smith 26:38
is it Benjamin Franklin? Infamous? Marcia,
Bob Smith 26:41
I thought we loved Benjamin Franklin. Okay. Yes, we do. It’s King George the Third. Oh, yeah. He’s the monarch our forefathers rebelled against during the American Revolutionary War, the New York City Chamber of Commerce was the first chamber of commerce in America. And guess what it was incorporated under a royal charter granted by King George in 1770. And we want to invite any rappers out there who’d like to submit questions to us to do so by going to our website which is the off ramp dot show and go to contact us. And there you can give us the question the answer where you got it and and where you’re from. We want to know where you’re from. Tell us where you’re from. So thanks for our correction from our friends about the light years question. That was great. We appreciate that. That’s it for today. I’m Bob Smith.
Marcia Smith 27:30
I’m Marcia Smith. Join
Bob Smith 27:30
us again next time when we return with the off ramp.
The AF rep is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarbrook Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
