NOVEMBER

So tell us, what sort of man is Saddam Hussein -- up close and personal?

He has the scrupulously neat desk of an anal-compulsive. Although friendless, Saddam can be charming and is known to joke – he jokes, you laugh. He likes movies, especially "The Godfather." He has been married – and carrying on with other women -- for decades.

Subject of a 19-volume, self-commissioned biography, the cigar-smoking Saddam limps from a bad back, for which he swims every morning. He eats sparingly – his food is examined first by x-ray -- to control his paunch, drinks Mateus rose and dyes his hair black to hide the gray. Saddam believes himself to be divinely inspired. Less than a perfect parent, he sired at least one son, Uday, who is a sadistic maniac.

Although he hangs some opponents, Iraq’s “Great Uncle” shoots most of them. He has been said to weep at times over the results of his own cruelty. There, I knew it all along: a big softy.

Source: www.theatlantic.com



Making book

Since 1980, 2 million books have been published in the U. S., about 1.5 times as many as were published in the previous 100 years. There was a new book published every 4 seconds last year, and sales totaled $25,356,500,000 billion.

The only people happier than booksellers were the optometrists.

Source: www.writenews.com



Didja Know...
In the early 14th century England, soccer was considered such a public nuisance that King Edward III attemped to suppress the game? (Source: fifa.com)

Why do we not give a tinker's damn about something?

The late 20th Century’s most significant technological innovation may have been the consumer product heave-ho. If it breaks, discard it and upgrade to the latest model.

But our grandparents had the quaint idea of repairing, say, a table radio. Go back many more generations and you find just about everything being repaired – even pots and pans. The fellow who fixed those utensils was called the tinker, possibly because of the “tinking” sound he made while working (or ... possibly not). He was an itinerant repairperson, sometimes little more than a vagrant, and was held in low regard. That’s why we say that someone who is not necessarily an expert is just tinkering with something.

Tinkers also had the reputation of cursing, but how much could you care about profanity from such low life? So, if you don’t even give a tinker’s damn about something, it’s worthless and doesn’t bother you.

Source: THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, UNABRIDGED



High tide, ho hum

The Bay of Fundy, between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, has the highest tides in the world. At their peak, they come up 70 feet. As they roll in on the Bay, these tides create a 4- foot high wave, or “tidal bore.”

My 8th grade English teacher had that same effect.

Sources: THE JOY OF TRIVIA AND MERRIAM WEBSTER’S GEOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY



Didja Know...
Mikey did NOT die from eating Pop Rocks and drinking soda?
(Source: Urban Legends I)

How come ducks have only dark meat?

A duck is just naturally less of an all-purpose bird than a chicken. You don’t see too much Southern Fried duck or duck salad sandwiches. And you can’t get white meat from a duck.

The basic difference between ducks and chickens has to do with how they travel. Ducks fly, and they need a good deal of a protein called myoglobin. It stores the oxygen their muscles need for the contraction required by flight. The iron-rich myoglobin is dark red, giving duck meat its dark color.

But your basic chicken is more of a hop, skip and a jump individual. Most chicken muscle – “fast-twitch,” it’s called -- needs to contract quickly, but only briefly, requiring less myoglobin, making most chicken meat lighter than a duck’s. Among people, long-distance runners are like ducks, while sprinters have more muscle that is fast-twitch. So, if you must have white meat, order chicken ... or a sprinter.

Source: www.nytimes.com



Yak, yak, kaboom

When you speak, you release about 200 ergs of energy per syllable. The number of ergs released by the first atom bomb, on the other hand, was 10 to the 21st power – 10 followed by 21 zeros. All of which shows that the phrase, “Talking someone to death,” is probably a gross exaggeration, except when applied to my uncle Henry.

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS




Didja Know...
According to FIFA's world rankings, the highest ranked national team who did NOT play in this year's FIFA World Cup was Colombia, which is ranked fourth among world soccer sides?
(Source: fifa.com)

Why do we say that something expensive or high class is "ritzy?”

It’s not because they remind us of crackers and a certain brand name, even though ritzy things are certainly worth their salt. But food does have something to do with it because the hotels from which the word was borrowed were known to cook up some good dinners.

There’s no use feeling sorry for Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz (1850-1918), just because he didn’t trademark the name of his three luxury hotels that engendered the widely used adjective, ritzy. His eponymous establishments in Paris and Piccadilly and the Ritz-Carlton in New York City set standards of luxury in cuisine and accommodations. So good and expensive were they that they became synonymous with wealth.

“Putting on the Ritz,” by the way, means acting as if you’re wealthy. But you shouldn’t carry it to the point of putting on a ritzy hotel with a bad check.

Source: BREWER’S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE, edited by Ivor H. Evans



Close Encounters

The alien spaceship scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind were filmed in Mobile, Alabama, inside what may have been the largest movie set ever: a World War II dirigible hanger. The actors had to imagine all the special effects, added later.

Director Steven Spielberg told Francois Truffaut, an actor in this film, that he and Truffaut were alone among the 250 people on the set who did not do drugs. No wonder the rest had no trouble “seeing” the alien ships!

Source: RETAKES: BEHIND THE SCENES OF 500 CLASSIC MOVIES




Didja Know...
According to the international soccer organzing body, FIFA, the lowest-ranked nation's team in the world is Montserrat, #203?
(Source: fifa.com)

Was "Paul Bunyan" a journalist's invention or a true folk myth?

It gets mighty cold in the north woods, and a campfire is always welcome. And where there’s a campfire, there are stories and tall tales. But is this one purely a product of oral tradition, or did some lumber company copywriter concoct it?

Both sources contributed to the making of Paul Bunyan, the giant lumberjack; there appears to be at least as much Plastic Wood as genuine timber in the legend. In 1914, William B. Laughead wrote the first of several Paul Bunyan pamphlets for the Red River Lumber Company, embellishing tales he had heard in the woods. He was the one who dubbed Bunyan’s blue ox, “Babe.” The pamphlets appeared through the 1940s, but the one published in 1922, especially, made Paul Bunyan known worldwide. Other writers recounted and embroidered the stories in print, taming the originally bawdy content into family fare.

So, Paul Bunyan may be less canned than the “Jolly Green Giant,” but anyone who insists he’s pure myth probably has an axe to grind.

Source: www.straightdope.com



Good news, bad news

People spend a fortune on products to make themselves look good. Maybe nature can show us a better way. The Egyptian vulture, for example, has a naturally pasty face but can transform it into a bright and sexually attractive (to other vultures) yellow through the antioxidant carotenoid pigments in its diet.

The bad news is that the bird eats horse manure to get this nutrient. I think I’ll stick to Hostess Twinkies.

Source: www.nytimes.com



Didja Know...
The planet Venus is enveloped by an atmosphere of sulfuric acid?
(Source: About.com)

How did the ancient Egyptians make a mummy?

You never can tell when such a practical, if retro skill might come in handy. Maybe the Boy Scouts will offer it as a new Merit Badge. So here it is, quick and simple: “Mummies for Dummies.”

Notwithstanding certain horror movies, the recipe generally called for starting with a dead person. Observing that decomposition began with the internal organs, the Egyptians removed them and placed them in jars to accompany the deceased on his or her journey into the afterlife -- that’s “travelin’ light.” They stuffed the body cavities with incense (no bread crumbs, please) and, covering it with moisture-absorbing sodium compounds called natron, left the body to dry out for 5 to 6 weeks--or roughly a week or two longer than it takes the average modern-day celeb to dry out at Hazelden.... Then they replaced the stuffing with natron and resin-soaked linen, stitched up the mummy, applied the familiar bandages and put the whole thing in a box.

Finished. As they say in Hollywood, that’s a wrap.

Source: www.howstuffworks.com



I’ll have a bagel

The average American spends about $24 annually on cereal, while in Battle Creek, Michigan, where Kellogg’s kicked off cereal-for-breakfast in the 19th century, they buy $29 worth. Nevertheless, cereal is losing out as a breakfast food. Nationwide, cereal sales are down 20 percent in the past six years and have declined 27 percent in Battle Creek.

These days, you find more flakes on the road than in the breakfast bowl.

Source: www.wsj.com



Didja Know...
The average person sees more than 20,000 TV commercials in a year.
(Source: About.com)

Why do we say that an over-protected boy is being 'mollycoddled?'

The roots of this word go back several hundred years. Caudle, which appears to be the source of coddle, was a gently boiled, slightly alcoholic, watery porridge that was good for what ailed you – a precursor of medicinal chicken soup. Coddle first meant to parboil, the way caudle was made, and would suggest not so much smothering protectiveness as cannibalism. But the present meaning of coddle, treating someone as if he or she were helpless or ill, more directly evokes “caudle.”

Molly was once a nickname for Mary, with mollycoddling implying treatment of a boy in an unmanly fashion. And what could that cause? Well, “Miss Molly” was 17th century slang for a homosexual. All of which suggests that those people who do deep analysis of popular culture ought to revisit Little Richard’s classic 1950s rock n’ roll song, “Good Golly Miss Molly,” and report back. (Or, maybe not....)

Source: www.worldwidewords.org



No guts

In 1977, scientists discovered the giant tube worm 1.5 miles beneath the surface of the Pacific, 200 miles from the Galapagos Islands. As long as 5 feet, it has no mouth or stomach. Billions of bacteria inside it produce the “food” that sustains the worm.

It was named Riftia pachyptila Jones, after Meredith Jones, a Smithsonian worm expert. Next new cockroach they discover – I want it named for my landlord.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK



Didja Know...
Ronald Reagan was originally cast in the immortal role of "Rick" in the movie "Casablanca."
(Source: The People's Almanac #3)

Why is someone who is upset "beside" him or herself?

The idea that people can be beside themselves is quite a stretch, not to mention schizophrenic. It also raises some interesting ethical questions. For example, on an exam, can you be accused of cheating if you whisper the answer into your own ear?

The expression arises from ancient, “primitive” religious notions that endorsed the reality of what we would call “out- of-body” experiences. Under extreme stress, they thought, the soul and the body could separate, thus making it possible to stand outside oneself. We tap into the same notion when we say that someone is out of his or her mind. Similarly, we derive the word “ecstasy” from the Greek, meaning, “stand outside of.” And did you ever say that someone who is flaky is “out to lunch?” Same idea. They’re still here physically, but mentally they’re up the street, wolfing down the blue plate special.

Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD ORIGINS by Jordan Almond



Taking stock

Just look at yourself. You have 32 permanent teeth – well, you used to – 206 bones, 60,000 miles of blood vessels, and about 3,500 square inches of skin that varies in width from .5mm. to 6mm. Every day you breathe 700,000 cubic inches of air.

Of course you need to eat chocolate -- to get the energy to keep from falling apart. We just haven’t established a daily minimum requirement for it yet.

Source: THE JOY OF TRIVIA



Didja Know...
Hugh Hefner put together the first issue of Playboy Magazine while moonlighting from his job with "Children's Activities" magazine. (Source: The People's Almanac #3)

What's the UV Index, and why should I care?

If you have a peaches and cream complexion and don’t want to end up a baked apple or get skin cancer, read on.

The UV Index tells you what level of potentially harmful ultraviolet rays you will have to deal with if, like mad dogs and Englishmen, you go out in the noonday sun. It ascends from 0 to 10 and is influenced by four variables. The first is the density of the ozone layer, which helps to block these rays. Clouds, another factor, perform a similar function. The season also comes into play: the sun’s rays are more direct in the summer. The relative height of your location also figures in: the higher you are, the less protection clouds and ozone offer you.

Most at risk for overdoing tanning are dense people who’ve clouded their minds by GETTING high. Their heads are already IN the ozone layer.

Source: www.howstuffworks.com



Whiter than white

Manufacturers can’t put bleach in general purpose detergents, so they developed “fabric brighteners.” These work because they reflect blue light. That hue combines with a yellow stain on a fabric to make it appear white.

I’m one step ahead. As an emergency measure, I always carry a small bottle of blueberry juice to pour on yellow stains.

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS



Didja Know...
The word game "Scrabble" was invented by Alfred Butts. (Source: About.com)

What's a spoonerism?

The path between your brain and your mouth can be filled with hot poles, uh, potholes. If your mind works faster than your tongue, you might advise someone that to speak too fast is lushing his or her puck.

Technically, this is a metathesis, or transposition – in this case the accidental mixing of sounds, usually the initial ones, from two or more words with humorous results. But we call them Spoonerisms, after an Oxford Dean of a century ago, Rev. W. A. Spooner. Although a very intelligent man, he was famous for tripping over his own tongue. When he officiated at a wedding, he advised the groom, “it is now kisstomary to cuss the bride.” And he is once said to have asked a parishioner if she was not “occupewing the wrong pie.”

Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD AND PHRASE ORIGINS, by William and Mary Morris



When peanuts become passé

The monkey population of Japan has risen from 15,000 to 150,000 in the past half-century. In the country, anti- social simians jump on cars, extorting junk food from drivers. Marauding monkey gangs bother women and children at the edge of urban areas.

There may be only one way to deal with the monkey menace: culinary culling. Would you like monkey teriyaki or monkey tempura?

Source: www.nytimes.com



Didja Know...
Samuel F.B. Morse set about perfecting the telegraph as a money making scheme to augment his meager income earned from portraiture.
(Source: About.com)

Did anybody "invent" email?

Remember when you could name the inventor of everything basic in your life, like Edison and the light bulb? It’s different now. Most people don’t know who invented email, although they know it wasn’t Al Gore.

The Internet itself evolved out of ARPANET – invented in 1969, also not by Al Gore -- a network established by the military to link universities to each other. It was used only to exchange research papers. But people with terminals on the same university system had been leaving messages for each other for some time. Finally, in 1971, Ray Tomlinson, who worked for ARPANET, broke the ice. He sent a message over the new network to himself:” Testing 1-2-3.” He also established the convention for email addresses, as in aeinstein@mailbits.com.

Yes, I guess it's safe to say we’ve come a long way from “Testing 1-2-3.”

Source: www.let.leidenuniv.nl



Pet poultry

Put your puppy out to pasture and send the pussycat packing. This is the year of the pet chicken. Rich people are buying fancy fowl and building $1,500 backyard hen spas that feature solariums. Even Martha Stewart is pushing chicken husbandry (with help from Mrs. Chicken, I guess).

And I thought a Rhode Island Red was a person with questionable politics who lived in a small state.

Source: www.wsj.com



Didja Know...
Smoking kills more people each year than AIDS, alcohol, automobile accidents, cocaine, crack, heroin, and suicide, combined. (Source: garybhaley.com)

Why are Wall Street pessimists called "bears?

Buying and selling stocks is a grizzly business. If your mood is dark, money-managing mavens compare you to a large, dangerous carnivore. Sounds like they need not so much a “Street” as a cage. Optimism they characterize as a lot of bull.

Why don’t they compare pessimists to an animal who hangs his head, such as an anteater? Or one that looks perpetually anxious – say, a monkey: “The monkeys ruled Wall Street today.” I like that. But they are bears because of an old expression, “Selling the skin before you’ve caught the bear.” The analogy is to selling stocks short. That’s selling them now before you have actually paid for them yourself, gambling that the price will drop and you will have to pay less later.

On any other street, someone who sells something they haven’t yet paid for is called a “thief.”

Source: BREWER’S DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE edited by Ivor H. Evans



Once a knight?

Sir Galahad was the illegitimate son of Sir Lancelot. Dad got around quite a bit with the fair damsels, which is possibly why he was called Sir Lan . . . oh, never mind.

There were 150 Knights of the Round Table, and they needed nametags at dinner. With all that armor, how could they tell their fingers from a fork?

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS



Didja Know...
According to the insurance services firm, CCC, the car model most often stolen is the 1991 Toyota Camry
(Source: MSN.com)

What three things do the words "harlot" and "hussy" have in common?

Well, they both start with the letter "h" and refer to disreputable women. Two down. Thirdly, both began life meaning something very different than they do today.

Harlot, for example, used to be a guy kind of thing. Harlot was originally a French word meaning a male vagabond, entering English with its spelling intact. There's even a "he" harlot in Chaucer. But by the 15th century, it had crossed over, so to speak, leaping genders and taking with it the notion of someone who not only knocks around but sleeps around as well, for money.

Hussy was a 16th century shortening of "housewife." But it took no more than a century after that for its meaning to transfer to a shameless woman who not only made beds but might make it in bed with various and sundry. Unlike a harlot, the hussy maintained her amateur status.

Source: THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY, edited by C. T. Onions



Take it off

Tigers aren't just orange and brown. There are white tigers with brown stripes, a Bengal Tiger mutation. And there are even White Tigers -- not albinos -- whose stripes are so faint they can barely be seen.

How do the White Tigers get that way? Maybe they do a stripe tease.

Source: www.5tigers.org/color.htm



Didja Know...
AThe first U.S. Census results showed that the U.S. population in 1790 was 3,929,214?
(Source: US Government)

When did the tradition of priestly celibacy begin?

Newspaper headlines might give you the impression that it’s yet to start. But seriously...

The crisis in the American Church, especially, has raised again the issue of whether celibacy for priests is a good or workable idea. Jesus and many of his disciples were celibate. But Peter, the first Pope, married, and the office was passed from father to son a number of times in the early Church. The idea of a celibate priesthood was apparently first introduced at a Church Council in A. D. 304, when married priests were told not to have children, but it was not till 1139 that full celibacy became codified Church doctrine under Pope Gregory VII.

The underlying idea behind celibacy was to erect a moral wall between a cloistered clergy and the world of sin outside. It was adopted in the 12th century because too many priests appeared to be booking frequent flyer miles traveling between those places.

Source: www.historynewsnetwork.org



You have a stake in this

Driving a stake through the heart or exposing to sunlight is not the only way to kill a vampire. In Crete, for example, they believe you should boil the head in vinegar, while Macedonians favor driving a nail through the navel.

In parts of Romania, they say cut out the heart and split it in two, stick garlic in the mouth and bang a nail through the head. And serve as an appetizer or entrée?

Source: www.straightdope.com



Didja Know...
Americans consume about 138 billion cups of coffee a year?
(Source: AbsoluteTrivia)

What's a fitness boot camp?

It’s where yuppies are abused by a trainer who gets truly personal, telling you just how miserable an excuse for a human being you are when you don’t do those one-armed pushups. No, it’s not the Marines. Here, you pay THEM to treat you like dirt.

It ain’t white wine and quiche they’re dishing out at these increasingly popular outdoor, before-work (sometimes before the crack of dawn) substitutes for going to the gym. Enrollees are called “recruits,” and your session leader could actually be a former drill sergeant. There’s at least one who fancies himself “Richard Simmons's evil twin.” There tend to be more women than men in these high-motivation, how- much verbal abuse-can-you-take exercise programs, for which you can sometimes sign up through a gym.

But be careful: grunts, uh, graduates sometimes forget themselves and scream “KILL” just as their tennis partner is about to serve.

Source: www.Kiplinger.com



Kissin’ cousins

First cousins are forbidden by law to marry in 24 states in the U. S. But an article in The Journal of Genetic Counseling recently pointed out that such marriages do not constitute incest and that the danger of birth defects from them is only slightly higher than when a couple are not related.

In many parts of the world, such unions are not only permissible but also encouraged. And they don’t even have trailers.

Source: www.nytimes.com



Didja Know...
The Viking alphabet was called the 'Futhark?'
(Source: antalyaonline)

How likely is it that "Bigfoot" exists?

A lot of people in the U. S believe there’s something big and bulky tramping through the woods of the Pacific Northwest, and it’s not the Michelin Tire Man. Some claim to have seen this ape-like creature or its footprints, and there are even recordings of its sounds. Naturally, there’s also a fuzzy film clip of this whatzzit.

Debunkers point out that the footprints have varied considerably, including the number of toes they seem to reveal. The creature in the film does not exceed the possible dimensions of a man in a monkey suit – or a hairy lineman for the NFL Seattle Seahawks, sans suit. The sounds could be faked. And analysis of fur and blood supposedly left by Big Foot, also called Sasquatch, has proved inconclusive.

Cryptozoologists, who study such phenomena, have been generally skeptical of its existence. But do they know for sure? Not yeti.

Source: www.ciscop.org



Grab it

Catching wild frogs has been illegal in Frances since 1977, except for a one-month frog-fishing season. The country even has frog police. Actually, they’re fishing wardens who concentrate on apprehending frog filchers.

I would call them poachers, except that they are more likely to fry the slimy little things.

Source: www.wsj.com



Didja Know...
The city of LaPaz, Bolivia is virtually fireproof? At 12,000 feet above sea level, there is barely enough oxygen to support combustion.
(Source: AbsoluteTrivia)

Why do we say that something held in high esteem is prestigious?

Did you ever find out that something you thought of as prestigious was not so hot? Maybe it just looked good until you got closer to it and discovered that looks can indeed be deceiving, that appearance can be an illusion.

Guess what the Latin word was for illusion: “praestigium.” The Romans described something replete with illusion, full of tricks, downright deceitful, as “praestigiosus.” That was the source of prestigious when it entered English in the 16th century with this decidedly negative meaning. It was not until the 19th century, when people fastened on the idea that an illusion can be genuinely dazzling, that the words prestige and prestigious were upgraded and began to be applied to something admirable.

Moral: next time you’re dazzled by something, be sure it’s not just someone shining a light in your eye.

Source: www.Merriam-Webster.com



Down to earth

Alaska’s largest river, the Yukon, flows 2,400 miles in an enormous circle. Yukon get dizzy just trying to navigate it.

Some granite chips discovered in Tanzania have proven to be 3.5 billion years old. What the heck is a “granite chip,” snack food for dinosaurs?

Source: The Joy of Trivia



Didja Know...
Weighing approximately 13 pounds at birth, a baby caribou will double its weight in just 10 days?
(Source: AbsoluteTrivia)

If "overwhelmed" means overpowered by something, what does it mean to be “whelmed?”

Pick up just about any dictionary – except the huge, unabridged ones – and look at all the words they list that are made by putting “over” in front to mean excessively . . .. In just about every case – maybe in every one, depending on the dictionary – the second part of the word can stand alone as a word you might use.

But nobody I know uses “whelmed” in any context. Oh, it’s a word. And some people use it humorously to mean not overwhelming, not underwhelming, just whelmed. But whelmed does not mean something in the middle. It actually means pretty much the same thing as “overwhelmed.” In the Middle Ages, whelmed meant to turn something over, to capsize it. That means overpowering to me, not something halfway between anything. That’s still what it means. So “overwhelmed” is really overdone. Understand?

Source: www.merriam-webster.com



Rated R

Builders us a measurement called R-value. It’s the amount of resistance to heat offered by a material and is useful in calculating its value as insulation. For example, wood siding has an R-value of 0.8.

The movie industry uses a similar measurement, but in their case, it signifies how much heat the product is likely to generate.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK



Didja Know...
Some subatomic particles have a lifetime of just a few trillionths of a trillionth of a second? In this instant, light, (which takes just 1.25 seconds to travel from Earth to the Moon) travels no more than the width of a proton!
(Source: Protienrich.com)

Why do lemmings commit suicide?

Because the drugstore won’t sell them Prozac? Because someone handed them a mirror, they gazed and realized that all they were, in fact, were lemmings? Maybe they just never have a nice day.

Or maybe they simply don’t commit suicide. And that turns out to be the fact of the matter. Lemmings don’t have a death wish, but occasionally their population does experience explosive growth. Their numbers multiply way beyond the capacity of their environment to sustain them. When that happens they’ve got to move, and sometimes quickly. They have been known to swarm out of their habitat. In their anxiety to move, mishaps may occur. Some of them, for example, may careen off a cliff. But it’s not because another rodent has jilted them. They just didn’t look where they were going.

So, they don’t need Prozac, after all. But maybe a good pair of glasses wouldn’t hurt.

Source: WHY MOTHS HATE THOMAS EDISON by Hampton Sides



Wanna buy a bridge?

There’s a hot market in used bridges in the U. S. A 15-year- old federal law requires states to offer for sale any bridge with historical or architectural value before tearing it down. Pennsylvania has sold 300 of them.

Maybe I should speak to someone in Pennsylvania about a bridge. They probably charge a lot less than my dentist.

Source: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL



Didja Know...
During the American Revolution, many brides did not wear white wedding gowns; instead, they wore red as a symbol of rebellion?
(Source: AbsoluteTrivia)

When did people start punning?

If you tossed a grenade into a French kitchen, would you get Linoleum Blownapart? Do backwards poets write inverse? Do hungry clocks go back four seconds? Are your calendar’s days numbered? When puns are outlawed, will only outlaws have puns?

Will this ever stop? Yes, right now. But who pushed the “start” button in the first place? Believe it or not, in the beginning, or pretty close to it, was the pun. It’s no coincidence that the name Adam comes from ancient Hebrew for both man and earth – from dust we come . . .. And The New Testament’s, “Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church.” (Matthew 16:1), is a pun, but only if you know Greek and realize that Peter is “Petros” and rock, “petra.”

People have always been fascinated by their power to make magic with language. The bounty of nature might come from the gods, but wordplay could be home-groan.

Source: www.vocabula.com



What color is your universe?

In January 2002, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University announced that the universe was turquoise. But in March, they told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society that they had erred: the universe is really beige.

Yeah, everything in the universe but their faces, which were a bright red.

Source: www.nytimes.com



Didja Know...
The popular American comic strip "Peanuts" is known as "Radishes" in Denmark?
(Source: TriviaWorld)

Why does running the faucet in freezing weather keep the pipes from bursting?

There’s nothing like driving up to your weekend house in the country in winter and discovering that you forgot to turn off the water when you last left. The pipes have burst and the next call of nature will take you into the bushes at 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

Why don’t they burst when it’s below freezing but you run the water frequently? That’s because in order to freeze, the water needs long, steady, continuous contact with the pipes, the temperature of which is lowered by the freezing air and ground outside it. The still water nearest the pipe very slowly losses its heat to the colder pipe’s surface. Then water further from that surface loses its heat to the already colder water next to it. All of the water eventually freezes and expands, bursting the pipe. And then the only thing flushed is your face, in embarrassment.

Source: www.straightdope.com



That’s all, folks!

There’s one time when anyone can get in the last word:

Convict James French, seated in the electric chair: “How about this for a headline in tomorrow's paper, French Fries!’”

Voltaire, asked on his deathbed to renounce Satan: “This is no time to make new enemies.”

Karl Marx, grouchy to the last: “Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!”

Source: www.vocabula.com



Didja Know...
Scientists say that people who sleep less than average (less than 6 hours a night) are more organized and efficient than everybody else?
(Source: AbsoluteTrivia)

Why do we say that someone who is insolvent is bankrupt?

Bankrupt literally means bank-broken, from the Latin "ruptus," broken. I suppose the English word could just as easily have been bankless, or as we put such things these days, bank-impaired, to suggest a lack of cash. But the particular form this word took arose from specific historical circumstances.

Bankrupt came into English in the 16th century from the Italian phrase, "banca rotta." Moneychangers – bankers -- in Italy used benches then as posts from which to conduct their business. When a banker became insolvent, his bench was broken (rotta) and he could no longer trade. “Broken” also carried the sense of “wrecked,” as in shipwrecked, suggests a thing or person that had been ruined. From this we also get the word, “broke.”

However, people who are broke because they borrowed from "disreputable" sources and can’t repay are probably not so much bankrupt as kneecapped.

Source: The Oxford English Dictionary, Unabridged



Aliens are a drag

The movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was about actual contact with extraterrestrials. But what are the first two kinds? A close encounter of the first kind is seeing an alien ship. The second encounter occurs when you find physical evidence of alien craft.

So what's a close encounter of the fourth kind? When your site has been hacked by aliens? When aliens keep your daughter out past her curfew?

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS



Didja Know...
According to a recent survey, 75 percent of people who play the car radio while driving also sing along with it?
(Source: AMG.com)