Today's Dippit!

Quote

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." 

Eleanor Roosevelt

Joke

What falls in winter but never gets hurt?

Snow!

Fun Fact

Actor Bill Murray uses a 1-800 number instead of an agent or manager.

Bill Murray is famous for starring in movies like the original Ghostbusters (1984) and Groundhog Day (1993). But anyone in Hollywood who's interested in working with him must first navigate a somewhat strange situation in order to get his attention. That's because the star uses a mysterious 1-800 number instead of an agent or manager.

"You just call the 1-800 number," filmmaker Theodore Melfi, who directed Murray in St. Vincent (2014), told USA Today. "You have to record the message and send the message. I started calling once a week … He never called back. I finally called his lawyer and said, 'I'm trying [to] reach Bill.' And he goes, 'What number do you got?' And I go, 'I've got the 800 number.' And he goes, 'Well, that's what I got.'"

Reading Fact

While reading, our eyes can move in different directions

It sounds like a health condition, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not strabismus. It’s a completely normal thing in healthy adults with 20-20 vision.

While reading, our eyes usually target different letters at once. Actually, that happens almost 50% of the time we spend reading. It’s a mechanism that helps us read and understand faster, which starts developing as soon as we start learning to read.

Our bodies are truly amazing and the way they adapt to our needs tells the story of thousands of years of evolution. Even if it’s through such small curiosities.

History Fact

The Luftwaffe had a master interrogator whose tactic was being as nice as possible.

Hanns Scharff was a master interrogator who was very much against physical torture and brutality.

His techniques were so successful that the US military later incorporated his methods into their own interrogation schools.

Scharff’s best tactics for squeezing information out of prisoners included: nature walks without guards present, baking them homemade food, cracking jokes, drinking beers and afternoon tea with German fighter aces.

He even took trips to visit fellow POWs and swimming pool parties. And on some rare occasions even test flights of German fighter aircraft.

Movie/TV Trivia

Jim Caviezel was struck by lightening while he was on the cross in, Passion of the Christ.

Movie/TV Quote

"I live my life a quarter mile at a time."

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

It's easy to forget that the Fast and the Furious series, the box-office dominating behemoth that's spawned seven sequels and a spinoff coming this summer, was based on an article about underground street racing in Vibe magazine. The Rob Cohen-directed original was built around a cast of relatively unknown young actors, featured a plot that was widely seen as a Point Break ripoff, and swiped its title from a Roger Corman B-movie from 1955. These movies had a humble beginning, and there was no grand plan. You might even say the series has lived its life a quarter mile at a time -- just like Dom Toretto, the racing guru and family leader played by the heart and soul of the franchise, Vin Diesel. Nearly two decades later, it's hard to remember that the actual monologue that this bumper-sticker-ready, live-life-to-the-fullest quote comes from is incredibly bleak: Dom tells Paul Walker's blonde-haired undercover FBI agent Brian O'Conner a haunting story about how he "watched his dad burn to death" in a racing accident and remembers "hearing him scream." If that wasn't heavy enough, Toretto then says he nearly beat the man who caused his father's crash to death with a wrench. Dom's "quarter mile at a time" philosophy isn't a hedonistic creed or an inspirational TED Talk-ready bromide. It's an acknowledgment of the death drive by a broken man.

Conversation Starter

How was your commute here?

Writing Prompt

Are You a Fair-Weather Fan?