Groublogpon – The Serious Blog of Groupon

Of all our findings this week, there was one discovery that stood out most. When compiling research for a murder mystery dinner deal, we found that most Americans wish they’d read more books, especially mystery books. As usual we went out of our way to help Groupon customers—preparing a tool for our readers to quickly achieve a greater knowledge of the mystery classics. Since then we’ve been inundated with thank you letters. Here’s what everyone has been so happy about:

Mysteries Revealed

There have been many, _many_ classic mystery stories over the years, far too many to read in their entirety. That’s why Groupon provides this handy list of Famous Murder Mystery Spoilers for the modern speed-reading sleuth.

• The Case of the Ironclad Leg_: Butler did it.
• The Creeping Wisp_: It was her other son, who faked his death in World War One.
• Lord Herrington’s Fortune_: Revised copy of the will was rolled up inside candlestick.
• Cody Extreme’s Cool Cases #117_: Mp3 player was in Steph’s paper-mâché volcano the whole time.
• The Blood-Wrung Mantle_: Parrot saw everything.

What did we learn this week at Groupon? As usual, lots. In our research of Tsada Yoga in Dallas, we discovered some interesting information about the history of yoga:

Yoga was invented in the early 1960s by a group of exiled Frenchmen living in the Swiss Alps after being banished for bizarre, alternative science experiments. Their leader, Jean-Pierre “Yoga” Yoga, was a fitness buff who believed that proper stretching would allow him to read minds when done on one of his extra-sensory-inducing “Yoga mats.”

Yoga traveled the world in a canoe, teaching his invigorating fitness plan and reading minds. However, a lifetime of deeply seeing into people’s inner-thoughts left him twisted and insane. Yoga gave up mind reading, saying, “The mind is a door locked for our own protection. I am hungry.” Today, the practice of Yoga continues to be performed on Yoga mats, though the true purpose of the mats—to induce clairvoyance—has largely been forgotten.

Even more interesting was our discovery about Zeno’s Paradox when doing background research on East Village Bowling Alley in San Diego:

Zeno’s dichotomy paradox is a complex philosophical paradox studied by complex philosophical students. Most students don’t understand the paradox, but the few who do believe it is an attempt to prove the impossibility of motion with the following argument: before you can arrive somewhere, you must arrive halfway there. Therefore, before you can arrive at your final destination, you will encounter an infinite number of halfway points, making it impossible to ever get all the way to your target.

Zeno’s actual goal with his paradox was to obtain free tacos at an ancient Greek bowling alley. His plan was to convince the server to give him half-price tacos, and then to cut that price in half, and so on. However, Zeno realized that he would never be able to get the price all the way down to zero because dividing by two always results in at least $2.46. Dejected, Zeno attempted to walk home, but encountered an infinite number of halfway points and died standing a mere Greek-yard outside his front door.

I hope next week we learn more about Raymond “Blue Ray” Raymonds, inventor of Blue-ray, but there’s really no way to predict that except to wait out the weekend.