Mirrors and Ips

I was reading WP Magazine today. It comes with the Sunday Washington Post. I like to flip to the last page first. Gene Weingarten's "Below the Beltway" is entertaining and informative. I wanna share two paragraphs from his recent column, "How to do a giggle search", because anything that makes me laugh is worth sharing.

Why is it that the mirror appears to reverse left to right but not up and down?

Because mirrors reflect, they do not invert, as a lens does. Your question mirrors a common ignorance, though. Back when I was the editor of my college paper, a BMOC-type student wanted to attend an anti-administration rally but asked us not to take his photograph there, for fear of being identified and punished. We refused to guarantee that. So, on the theory we would not dare to print profanity in the paper, he wrote the f-word on his forehead, backward, so when the photo was printed it would be readable. Alas, unlike mirrors, photographs do not flop images left to right. We ran the picture and identified him in the newspaper as the idiot who mistakenly printed a dirty word on his forehead backward. The caption correctly spelled out not only his name but the f-word.

What is my ip?

Your ip is the part of your psyche that is not the id, the ego or the superego. It is the part that produces stupid behavior, such as when you hit the button several times to make the elevator arrive faster. Collectively, the ip is responsible for the fact that there is a market for Segways, plug-in room fresheners and those blankets with sleeves.