Adrian Northrup

Dear Ask anything,
How prominent does a person have to be to be considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
– Just because

Based on your handle, I’m guessing you’re wondering because you want to kill your professor. Well, the easiest line we can draw to make this distinction cannot be measured by political influence, as you may have thought, but is based on social influence. The rule of thumb I like to use is the following question, “If I kill this person, will anyone care?”

Let’s use an example, shall we? Hypothetically, if I killed Britney Spears or Tom Cruise, for instance, no one would care. Ten years ago it would have been an assassination, but now, that’s not the case. So, you may say, what about Kevin Federline and Katie Holmes, wouldn’t they care? Of course they would, but they aren’t
“real” people.

For a more pertinent example, let’s say you killed your professor. Whether or not they provide a valuable service to our general public and future generations, you have to find out if people would care. I recommend checking www.ratemyprofessor.com or www.myprofessorsucks.com to check the statistics. But remember, they must have a unanimous grade of ‘F’
to qualify.

Dear Ask anything,
Why is bra singular and panties
plural?
– Doing laundry

I don’t know about the panties portion, or why the packages of Monday through Saturday panties chose to exclude Sunday, but there are several versions to the bra story that deserve to be told.

Bra is short for brassiere, which has a French etymology roughly translated to “arm protector.” Back in the French Revolution, women strapped their men up for battle with brassieres to prepare them for arm injuries because, as we all know, the French are cowards. Most of them looked like a bodice or corset depending on the level of cowardice.

It wasn’t until decades later that the women were the only ones who could figure out the clasps, something men still struggle with to this day, so they began to use them.

On the flip side, according to Bette Midler in “Beaches,” which is where I learned most of my general knowledge, Otto Titzling (emphasis on the Titz) invented the brassiere but lost in a lawsuit to Phillip de Brassiere. In either case, I’m probably more apt to answer “the manssiere” versus “the
bro” debate.