SEPTEMBER

Why do we respond to something dumb or obvious with "duh?"

There's a variant spelling of this sophisticated, witty comment and riposte, which is "doh!" Either way, we are dealing with a word that was just admitted to the august pages of the Oxford English Dictionary. Duh!

Most people would trace this word etymologically to Homer, and I don't mean the guy who wrote the Iliad. Since 1990, Homer, a character in "The Simpsons," Matt Groening's animated TV sitcom, has taught many of us to elevate our level of articulation with "Duh!" But the word and its usage didn't start there. You would have heard it at least as early as 1943 in a Merrie Melodies cartoon. "Duh.… Well, he can't outsmart me, 'cause I'm a moron," went the urbane dialogue. And by the 1960s, it was already being employed by young smart alecks to show that what a friend just said was too obvious for . . . for words.

Source: www.worldwidewords.com



It ain't milk and cookies

The residents of the Children's Hospital in Norwich England in 1632 had no trouble taking their afternoon nap. Each received a weekly ration of two gallons of beer.

At one time, Ann Arbor, Michigan had both the greatest number of dentists per person in the United States and the country's highest burglary rate. I guess that made it the extraction capitol of the nation.

Source: ISAAC ASIMOV'S BOOK OF FACTS



Didja Know...
Before he joined the band that would become Black Sabbath, rock 'n' roll madman Ozzy Osbourne (born: John Michael Osbourne) held a job testing car horns?
(Source: EW.com)

Why do we refer to someone who's lazy as lackadaisical?

Maybe we're just looking for trouble. People get punched in the snoot for such name-calling.

But if we insist on doing it, we should know that the word originates in a medieval expression, "alack-a-day," meaning "shame on this day." It had the implication of ruing the day because of the ill fortune it brought you. Over the years, though, it was watered down and used for trifling misfortunes and finally, for getting sentimental over things that didn't rate such feeling. Someone who habitually whined and went on about such piffle became a "lackadaisy" and was characterized as lackadaisical. Finally, it applied to languid people who had the energy to do only that and nothing substantive in life.

You know that "someone" we characterized as lackadaisical? He really is a lazy bum. Go tell him. I'll be right behind you.

Source: www.worldwidewords.com



Home of the blowhard

Oklahoma is the windiest state in the U. S, but Capitol Hill in Washington, D. C. is the windiest place in the country.

Only 10 percent of the Sahara Desert is dunes. The rest is mountains and plain dry land.

The most generically appropriate place name in the world was given to a village on France's Coulon River. It's called Apt.

Source: THE JOY OF TRIVIA



Didja Know...
The science of brewing and fermentation is known as Zymurgy?
(Source: howtobrew.com)

Why is Death Valley a national monument and not a national park?

You really want this lowest point in America to be a park? You mean, like a location for picnics? Hey, it's 120 degrees in the shade! Scratch that, there is no shade.

Death Valley became a national monument in 1933. The reason it has monument rather than park status is that the former applies to sites that are primarily of value for their scientific, anthropological and historical interest, not because they are tourist Mecca's. There aren't any long waiting lists for campsites in Death Valley. Monuments also differ from parks because the President can unilaterally designate a national monument, whereas only Congress can create a national park.

I can imagine Capitol Hill as a national park, with signs warning, "Please don't feed the politicians" and, "Secure your garbage."

Source: THE STRAIGHT DOPE by Cecil Adams



Hue can cross it any time

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is painted "International Orange," a blend of orange and red that was mixed to mesh with the span's environment. The paint is especially formulated to resist the corrosive action of the salt air blowing in from the Pacific.

The Navy had originally proposed painting it black with yellow stripes, but the local citizenry feared that might attract stray tigers or swarms of killer bees.

Source: www.Absolutetrivia.com



Didja Know...
It's illegal to drink beer out of a bucket while you're sitting on a curb in St. Louis!?
(Source: pogolo.com)

Does saltpeter really suppress sexual desire?

Saltpeter, potassium nitrate, is employed in the manufacture of explosives and fertilizer. It's a diuretic and is used in toothpastes for people with sensitive gums, in making pickles, curing meat and tempering steel.

But adolescents at summer camp, college students, prisoners and military recruits have also long suspected that the authorities have been pouring it into their soup and coffee to kill their sexual urges. If that's the case, a lot of people may be running around now thoroughly pickled, cured, tempered and fertilized. But saltpeter does not put the damper on the camper. It doesn't put the hex on sex and diminish the urge to merge.

However, it is true that in large enough quantities, saltpeter is toxic. That will kill sexual desire every time.

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS by Barbara Berliner



Whoa, big fella

Paleontologists used to think that Tyrannosaurus rex could reach speeds up to 45 miles per hour. But recent studies have put the brakes on T-Rex, which typically weighed in at 13,000 pounds. A creature that size would have needed 80 percent of its body mass in its leg muscles to go that fast.

Nevertheless, it could have won every race at the starting line if its jaws moved quickly enough.

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES



Didja Know...
The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.?
(Source: Encarta.com)

What does MSG do to food to make it tastier?

If you are allergic to MSG, monosodium glutamate, as I am, you care even more about what it does to you. "Chinese restaurant syndrome" can cause sudden and intensely painful sinus pressure.

For people not allergic, MSG enhances flavors by bringing out a kind of stealth taste in food that otherwise seems to slip by. The basic tastes are salty, bitter, sour and sweet. But the amino acid glutamine in MSG coaxes out another, somewhat salty flavor that has an extra richness to it that most people find hard to describe. This taste has an exotic name: umami. There are receptors on your tongue that will pick it out as you slurp up that egg drop soup.

I knew that when I was a kid. My mother took me to a Chinese restaurant and with the first sip of soup I cried, "umami!" just before the top of my head blew off.

Source: www.NutritionNewsFocus.com



How many filaments does it take to . . .

How many filaments do you suppose there are in a three-way light bulb? Obviously there aren't three or it wouldn't be worth asking this question. In fact, there are two. One lights up only at the lowest setting. The other is for the next highest. For the highest, they both go on.

It wouldn't be bad to be reincarnated as a light bulb. You get turned on all the time.

Source: www.howstuffworks.com

Why is someone who's indecisive "waffling?"

Picture a waffle. Lots of little squares that are ideal for holding syrup, right? So, what do you conclude about the relationship between this breakfast food's shape and being indecisive?

Nothing, I hope, because there isn't any relationship. The relationship is between waffle and the Old English word, "wafian," which meant "to wave." From that word in the 16th century came another, "whiffle," which described the wind when it changed direction. (Perhaps someone had a lisp and said what sounded like "the wind is whiffling.") Now jump to the 1950s and 60s and whiffle ball, a game in which you hit a wind-blown plastic ball with holes in it. That ball, like indecisive people, could go in any direction.

So, why don't we say that indecisive people whiffle, instead of waffle? Maybe someone talked with his or her mouth full. I'm not sure, can't decide. Pass the syrup, please.

Source: WHO PUT THE BUTTER IN BUTTERFLY? By David Feldman



Famous last words

Abraham Lincoln remained unconscious after he was shot by John Wilkes Booth and never spoke any "last words." However, we do know the last words he heard. He was attending a performance of the play, "Our American Cousin," and just before the shot rang out, one of the characters uttered the line, "You sock dologizing old mantrap."

Were there any justice in this world, someone would have shot the playwright, not the President.

Source: 2201 FASCINATING FACTS

Why is that alcoholic drink called "cold duck?"

There comes a time in every young person's life when, beverage-wise, you've outgrown the too sweet fizziness of soda pop but are not yet ready for the silly adult pretentiousness of vintage wine. Dude! It's time for cold duck.

Easy going down, potent enough to knock you down, this hang- loose libation is typically a mixture of cheap champagne and cheaper burgundy. But why befowl it with such a whacko name? Let us hie off to Germany. The party's over, but the waiters at the function are just getting started. They mix leftover wine and beer -- yech -- to produce a drink they call kalte ende, or "cold end." People mumbling, as they are wont to do, the expression evolved into kalte ente, which translates as "cold duck."

I got hooked on it. Every time I tried to quit cold duck cold turkey, I got chicken.



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



Heavy

The greatest pressure on Earth is to be found in the laboratory, not in nature or at your office. Scientists have produced pressures greater than 25 million pounds per square inch, enough to make diamonds resemble a liquid. That's 700 times as much pressure as you would feel if you stood under Mt. Everest, were you stupid enough to try it.

Source: ISAAC ASIMOV'S BOOK OF FACTS



Didja Know...
Charles Darwin, father of evolution theory, married his first cousin?
(Source: Slate.com)

Does the planet Vulcan in Star Trek have any basis in reality?

Spock, shmock. Just because Peter Pan believed in Never- Never Land, do you think you would earn frequent flier miles by booking a flight to it? Everyone knows that the planet Vulcan was a product of Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry's imagination.

Well, not entirely. Vulcan was not only the Roman god of fire, but also a planet that astronomers once conjured up to explain Mercury's peculiar orbit. Mercury's path didn't fully compute. So in the mid-19th century, astronomers bet there was a yet unobserved planet between Mercury and the Sun, the gravitational pull of which was responsible for Mercury's perturbing path.

Leave it to Albert Einstein to spoil the fun. The brainy one explained Mercury's orbit with his general theory of relativity. Exit Vulcan. Although . . . although, did you ever notice that underneath his long white hair, Einstein's ears look, well, rather pointy?

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS by Barbara Berliner



Amazing

What do rats dream about? Researchers at MIT who studied the brain patterns of rats being taught to negotiate a maze found they had the same pattern while sleeping after the task as they did while traversing the maze. The researchers concluded that the rats were dreaming about the maze. Or maybe the rats were just rethinking their plans to apply to MIT.

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES



Didja Know...
Charles Darwin, father of evolution theory, married his first cousin?
(Source: Slate.com)

Does the Koran really promise 72 virgins in heaven for martyrs?

There was a time when people could be enticed into accepting certain unpleasant conditions in this veil of tears with the promise of "pie in the sky when you die." Obviously, someone has been enriching the pastry.

Does martyrdom really pay such divine dividends? You won't find the Koran spelling it out quite that way. First, like any holy book translated from an older version of a current language, it depends on how you read the original. "WakawaAAiba" is the word in the original. "Full-breasted women," is one translation. However, the Koran doesn't specify a number, which comes from one of the sayings of Mohammad. And that source, somewhere lower in the holy hierarchy than the Koran, has it as 72 wives, not virgins.

Seventy-two wives casts a different light on this deal. Maybe you still have to take out the garbage, even in paradise.

Source: www.straightdope.com



Fill out form what?

When the atom bomb was being built in New Mexico during World War II, the government hired only illiterates as janitors so they wouldn't be able to pick up secrets from the trash. This policy was so successful that it was expanded to many other jobs throughout the vast government bureaucracy after the war and continues to this day.

Source: ISAAC ASIMOV'S BOOK OF FACTS



Didja Know...
The investing term "Blue Chip" comes from the color of the highest value of poker chip, blue!
(Source: Yahoo)

How do companies make themselves appear to be in better shape than they really are?

Cooking the books is a recipe for disaster, as Enron and Arthur Andersen executives learned when they were called to account. Amazingly, corporations can sometimes do this while barely staying within the limits of the law.

They can screw stockholders and the public by, for example, padding orders, sending more of a product than was requested, boosting accounts receivable and making it seem as if revenues are higher than they are. They can also save money, showing higher profits, by overestimating the expected return on investments, thus decreasing the amount they might have to put into an employee pension fund. Corporate honchos also get cute with "related party transactions," buying a small business and then having that business turn around and buy goods and services from the mother company.

Maybe Captain Kidd would have met a better end had he defined buried treasure as an off-the-books, non-disbursed accrual.

Source: www.cbsMarketWatch.com



Knock, knock

Funny things happen to English when it crosses the pond. In Britain, a person who takes the train to work each day and buys a discount ticket covering many rides is a season-ticket holder. In America people commute so they can afford to BE a season ticket holder

In America you might wake your sister, while in Britain you knock her up. Uh, oh.

Source: THE JOY OF TRIVIA



Didja Know...
The trampoline was invented in the 1920s by George Nissen of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
(Source: UselessKnowledge)

Why do we call unlawful imitation "plagiarism?"

Folk singer and humorist Tom Lehrer once opined that it's ok to plagiarize, as long as you call it "research." He was kidding, I think. Even if you plagiarize by accident, it's the kind of snafu over which people sue.

It wasn't always that way. Imitation was, as they say, the sincerest form of flattery until the 1600's. That's when writing began to become a profession and the idea arose that if you were the first to phrase something a certain way, you had a property right to it.

Playwright Ben Jonson (1572-1637) first called the violation of this right "plagiarism." He adapted the word from a similar French word that meant "kidnapper." Neat, huh? One's words are like one's children. When it comes to mine, I'm a progressive parent. I wouldn't think of pun-ishing them.

Source: www.historynewsnetwork.org



Come what May

May Day is often celebrated as the height of spring, with flowers and dancing. In Hawaii, they celebrate it as Lei Day. Although sometimes these leis are made from conventional flowers, such as roses, they may also contain exotica, including strings of wili-wili seeds.

Wouldn't you think that the chamber of commerce would be nervous about giving tourists the wili's?

Source: THE BOOK OF DAYS



Didja Know...
Those famous "dogs playing poker" pictures were painted by an artist named Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1937), whose nickname was "Cash."
(Source: The von Hoffman Bros.' Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness)

What was the first fashion magazine?

To find it, we have to return to the days when the ideal figure was ample, not anorexic, when the bustle was in the avant-garde and human beings, like pianos, stood on limbs, not legs.

The publisher's name was Samuel Orchard Beeton, an Englishman whose wife, Isabella, was to write the popular Book of Household Management. In 1852, before he met Isabella, Samuel, only 21, put out the first issue of the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. At the time, you couldn't go to a store and buy ready-to-wear clothing. So, Beeton included a paper dress pattern in each issue, allowing his readers to be au courant on the cheap. The fashion magazine was born.

Time has passed Beeton by. Today's woman complements her clothes with a ring through her nose. And if she wears sensible shoes, it's with matching tattoos.

Source: READER'S DIGEST BOOK OF FACTS



Heads up!

The odds are 1,023 to 1 against heads coming up 10 consecutive times when you flip a coin. The odds are even greater if you don't flip it.

It is said that Franz Shubert composed music so quickly and frequently that he often couldn't recognize his own work when it was later placed in front of him. I don't know about you, but I'm suspicious. Maybe some other composer might have recognized it as HIS work.

Source: 2201 FASCINATING FACTS



Didja Know...
Rock god David Bowie (born: David Jones) performed under the name Davey Jones until 1966, when he changed his nom de stage to 'Bowie,' to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees?
(Source: AllMusic.com)

Where do we get the expression, "fair to middling," meaning something is so-so?

People using this expression should have a piece of hay dangling from their mouth and be just a' sittin' and a' whittlin.' It's so rural.

You might think that middling, or "middlin,'" as it's often spoken, is just a corruption of middle. Fair to middling, which came into use in America the early 19th century, would then be simply a way of doubling the sense of average, ok, could be worse, etc. Essentially that's it, except that there is a more exact source for both fair and middling. In the 18th century they were grades of goods, especially cotton. They were intermediate grades, in the middle. So "fair to middling" would run a narrow range in the middle between extremes.

I was in a big city steakhouse last night, a rough-edged, masculine joint with sawdust on the floor, and I ordered porterhouse cooked "fair to middling," I was asked to leave.

Source: www.worldwidewords.com



The Write Stuff

These days you can get 12 pens for a dollar, or you can pay $80.000 for a single, limited edition, gold, platinum and diamond fountain pen. If what you're writing is not so rarified, try the $2,800 model with a sliver of one of Babe Ruth's bats embedded in it. According to the Wall Street Journal, 35 companies sell such pens.

Do you suppose they spell any better than my $1.79 model?

Source: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL



Didja Know...
In 1993, the city council of Steamboat Springs, CO ratified the public's choice for the name of a new bridge over the Yampa River, the James Brown Soul Center of the Universe Bridge?
(Source: AllMusic.com)

What was the first HMO?

If by HMO we mean a private, layperson controlled, prepaid, comprehensive and affordable health care plan open to all, we're still waiting. Mine helps me restrict calories because I have to go a week without eating each month to pay the bill.

Doctor controlled organizations such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield and union-negotiated plans in the late 1930s geared to specific industries laid the groundwork for the HMO's we all know and love today. Credit for the first goes to industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. As many as 200,000 workers in World War II defense plants under his control were covered by a plan called Permanente. After the war, he opened up the organization to the public and it became the Kaiser- Permanente health plan, the model for our present-day HMO's.

By the way, the term Health Maintenance Organization, or HMO, was only first used in 1970. I have another term for them, but it would never get past my editor's red pencil.

Source: THE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN MEDICINE by Paul Starr



Up for Some Liquorice?

In 1999, The New England Journal of Medicine reported on a study that said eating liquorice lowered a man's testosterone level. Leapin' libido was that played up in the press! But the media did not publicize the less sensational report two years later in the British journal, The Lancet that contradicted the original findings.

And there I was, about to propose a clever new theory explaining the fall of the Roman Empire.

Source: www.NutritionNewsFocus.com



Didja Know...
The last American president to sport facial hair was William Howard Taft, who left office in 1913. He had a mustache?
(Source: monstertrivia)

Why do we call a worldly person "sophisticated?"

This is all about wise guys. It starts with the ancient Greek word sophos, which meant wise. But it's not a straight line from there to sophisticated. In the 4th century B. C., a school of philosophy that emphasized verbal cleverness and skillful arguing over deep, serious thought was called sophistry. (The ancient Greeks didn't have a word for smart- ass -- "lawyer" came later.) Medieval Latin continued this line of thought, applying the word "sophisticare" to mean adulterating something or watering it down.

As the word morphed into sophisticated, a transformation of its meaning also occurred. By around 1700, sophisticated meant artificial (not far from adulterated), and unsophisticated came to mean pure and natural, the opposite of artificial. It was almost 1900 before sophisticated evolved yet again from the negative sense of artificial to the positive meaning of complex, knowledgeable, worldly, and not innocent. Yours truly.

Source: www.worldwidewords.com



Phi Alpha Centauri

There have been almost 50 earth-orbiting satellites built by amateurs since the Space Age began. Many have been built by college students and launched by the U. S. government. The latest, built at the U. S. Naval Academy for under $50,000, uses a tape measure from Home Depot as an antenna.

You know what the first astronauts to reach Mars will find? A frat house.

Source: www.CNN.com



Didja Know...
The largest importer of American cars is ... Canada?
(Source: absolutetrivia)

Why do we call a group within a group a faction?

This word has a contentious connotation and organizations often find it threatening. Political groups, for example, wishing to give the impression of unity, may deny it exists and call it a fiction. Or they might acknowledge some division, but minimize it as a fraction.

The word faction comes from the circus. No, not the kind where they have clowns, although my example about politicians might have lead you to guess that. This is the Roman Circus Maximus, and the performers we're interested in were the charioteers. They were grouped by "parties," the Latin word for which was factio. Each wore a different color. In the waning days of the Empire, two of the factios were also organized along political lines. They clashed over their politics, giving rise to the modern word faction and its disputatious sense.

Moral: If you drive a chariot and don't want friction, stick to the action and avoid the faction.

Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD ORIGINS by Jordan Almond



Let's Go to the Hop

What do you know about competitive bunny hopping? No, not that silly 1950s dance -- the real thing, with real bunnies, over hurdles. The Rabbit Hopping Association is the NFL of bunny hopping, with 500 members in 12 states. The world record for hopping for height was set in Denmark, where the sport began in 1970: 3.26 feet.

Competitors have no trouble finding something to rub for good luck.

Source: The Wall Street Journal



Didja Know...
The numbers on opposite sides of a die always add up to 7?
(Source: pogolo.com)

Exactly what is nirvana?

Aside from a rock group? Probably the next flavor of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Surely a nightclub somewhere. An expensive fragrance on some department store counter, no doubt. Possibly something to smoke or sniff, but I wouldn't know about THAT!

Nirvana has such a trendy, feel-good sound that it's useful to recall occasionally that the word actually describes a religious concept. Buddhists really do aspire to get blissed out, to achieve nirvana. But this doesn't need to be drug induced. In fact, nirvana implies a letting go, not a taking in. It's happiness through the extinguishing of desires. In fact, in Sanskrit the word means putting out a light.

Nirvana is a gentle, quiet, peaceful satisfaction, devoid of desire and possession. Hey, it can sure make for cheap birthday presents.

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS by Barbara Berliner



Buddy, can you spare a dime?

The number of billionaires on Earth has declined by 83 in just one year to only 497. What's more, their net worth plummeted to $1.54 trillion from the $1.73 trillion it totaled in flush times just a year earlier.

I bet they have collector's cards for these guys like they do for baseball players. I'll trade you a Bill Gates rookie card for a J. P. Morgan and a Captain Kidd.

Source: www.cbs.marketwatch.com



Didja Know...
The surface of Venus is actually hotter than Mercury's, despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun?
(Source: absolutetrivia)

What makes a halogen light work?

You, when you turn it on. Aright, there's more to it. Like the light bulbs with which we are more familiar, halogen lamps have a tungsten filament that's heated until it's white hot. But the similarity ends there.

Frosted glass surrounds the filament in the average bulb. It also encases it, typically, in a gas such as nitrogen or argon. The current generates enough heat to vaporize the tungsten, depositing a residue on the glass. The filament eventually develops a thin spot and breaks.

In halogen lamps, one of the halogen gasses surrounds the filament. These gases combine with tungsten vapor, redepositing it on the filament and extending its life. Quartz replaces glass in the halogen bulb. It can be placed closer to the filament, making these bulbs hotter as well as smaller and more long lasting than the average bulb. There's you're excuse: the bulb melted your homework.

Source: www.howstuffworks.com



Great Expectorations

How do you avoid getting drunk in the tasting room on a winery tour? You don't swallow - you spit. And it's not just any kind of spitting. There's a bucket for that purpose and the way you do it is to lean over and drip the wine from your mouth.

Then how do you avoid getting full at those gourmet stores where they have all the free pate samples? You don't want to know.

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES



Didja Know...
Lucille Ball was kicked out of drama school in New York City when she was 15 because she was deemed 'too quiet and shy?'
(Source: uselessknowledge)

Why do we call someone who kills a prominent person, an assassin?

What else should we call him, "Santa Claus?" Although one person's assassin is sometimes another person's political hero, I think we can all agree that the practice is not very nice.

The act of assassination has, of course, a long history. Just ask Julius Caesar (but don't expect an answer). However, the word we now use for it goes back a mere 1,000 years or so to the Crusades, in which Christian knights tried to retake the Holy Land from those who believed in the Prophet Mohammed. Crusading was a messy business that engendered some pretty hard feelings--and harsher reprisals-- among those who rightly took exception to being called the scourge of God. A few of these followers of Islam banded together to knock off the Crusaders, one by one. And to get themselves up for this perilous, often deadly mission, they smoked hashish. Those who partook were known as "hashshashin," from whence comes the word we use today.

Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD ORIGINS by Jordan Almond



Count 'em

In music, the note called a "breve" consists of 256 semihemidemisemiquavers.

The Marquis de Sade wrote his entire "120 Days of Sodom" while imprisoned in the Bastille. De Sade wrote the work on a 120-meter roll of paper. Then he whipped it off to his publisher.

Source: home.bitworks.com.nz/trivia/arts.htm

What's a prayer wheel?

If you think it's the kind of wheel that allows you to bet on the red or the black, you don't have a prayer. Neither is it connected to how you feel about your chances of making it to the next gas station on the tire you just changed, or what they do in the pits at a NASCAR race.

A prayer wheel is a Tibetan Buddhist religious object related to the mantra, a sacred sound, word or phrase that one repeats. But you don't have to say your mantra. You can print it on paper, roll it inside a cylinder, attach that to a rod, and turn it. Every revolution is thought to be the equivalent of reciting it. Better yet, you can attach your mantra to an object such as a windmill that is turned automatically by nature and that, too, is the equivalent of reciting it.

Source: THE BOOK OF ANSWERS by Barbara Berliner



Digital digression

Americans traveling in Australia should realize that the "V" for victory sign, holding up two angled fingers, is the Aussie equivalent of an American extending upward only the middle finger. Americans who are ignorant of this basic cultural difference and give the two-finger sign are creating a no-win situation.

Source: www.uselessknowledge.com



Didja Know...
The name 'Adam' comes from the Hebrew word for earth?
(Source: behindthename.com).

Was there really a Johnny Appleseed?

There's sometimes a thin line between mythology and pathology. How would YOU characterize a guy today who walked barefoot from town to town, wearing a tin pot on his head, dressed in strange clothes, preaching and planting trees? You would probably call the cops and have this nut put away.

Well, John Chapman (1774-1845), aka "Johnny Appleseed," was neither pathological nor mythological. He probably didn't go barefoot, as he is sometimes depicted, and while he may have smoked pot or whatever was the equivalent in those days, he didn't wear one. He did preach and plant orchards in the Midwest, although not simply by scattering seeds from a sack. In fact, by the time he died he was pretty well off, owning lots of land and many orchards.

Hey, the guy was just into apples. Live with it!

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh



OK

IKEA, the name of the worldwide home furnishings emporium, is an acronym. The founder was Ingvar Kamprad, accounting for the first two letters. And his family farm in Sweden was called Elmtaryd, hard by the village of Agunnaryd, providing the last two.

After trekking through one to find sufficient storage containers to cram 15 rooms of stuff into an 8-room house, I Know Every Aisle.

Source: www.nametrade.com



Didja Know...
A crocodile always grows new teeth to replace the old teeth he or she loses? (useless trivia.com).

Why do we say that something that's silly is, well, "silly?"

Oh, how the mighty have fallen! At one time, if you were silly it meant that you were blessed. Now, I have to tell you that I am one of those free spirits who still thinks it is blessed to be silly, but I would never claim that it was also silly to be blessed.

Silly began as the Old English word, "saelig," which described a happy state of affairs. In fact, if you were unhappy, you were unsaelig. As English evolved, the word became seely - sounds like it passed through Latin America, doesn't it? - and eventually, silly. But that wasn't the only thing that changed. Gradually it came to mean innocent. Then "silly" really fell on hard times and described someone who was pitiful. After that, it was strictly etymological misfortune as it spiraled down into ignorant, weak and foolish.

Maybe we should buy this word a drink.

Source: THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY



Cats and dogs

Cats can make about 10 times as many vocal sounds as dogs. Sure, but they use them to form only two, two-word expressions: "I want," and "Do what?"

Figure to spend about $6,500 on an average size-dog throughout its lifetime. For a cat, that would only cover the new toys you have to use as bribery to get the animal to eat the food on which you spent $10,000.

Source: www.funtrivia.com



Didja Know...
More than five billion little green houses have been "built" for Monopoly games since 1935?
(monopoly.com)

What's the function of characters such as "?," "=" and "~" in URL's?

Even computer cognoscenti don't always know about that stuff after the first "/." Is it the machine's way of cursing you out, as in &%$!!*%+?&?"

No, but it is letting you know where it's at. The familiar part of the address, as in www.cmonupandseemesometime.com/, is the location of the page on the Web. It's like the street address of a house. But what if it's an apartment house or office building? You also have to know where in the house or building you're going. The "~" is one of those direction marks, in this case indicating that the page is on a personal folder on the server.

But maybe you need to ring the bell and use the intercom. The "?" and "=" refer to scripts that handle the information you are asked to input to further narrow your search. Go ahead: input.

Sorry, nobody's home.

Source: THE NEW YORK TIMES



A story with punch - a right cross

The expression, "hands across the water," symbolizes nations reaching out to each other. For France and the U. S., though, it's more like "arm-in-arm." The French sent the Statue of Liberty's right arm across the Atlantic for showing at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Then the arm traveled back to France to be attached to the rest of the statue. Then it crossed for the last time as part of the whole statue.

Speaking of expressions, who footed the bill for all this junketing?

Source: absolutetrivia.com



Didja Know...
The Atlanta Braves star pitcher John Smolz once missed a start due to severe burns? He suffered this injury while ironing a shirt ... that he was still wearing.
(Source: espn.com)

Was there any difference between a mammoth and a mastodon?

What can you say about hairy elephants? Appearances notwithstanding, they were shunted onto one of evolution's sidings, rather than its trunk line. They didn't survive to have peanuts thrown at them at the zoo.

To most people, all hairy elephants look alike. They can't tell a mammoth from a mastodon. But they were two different animals and the distinction could be important should you ever trip over a large chunk of ice containing one of these extinct mammals. Mastodons go back almost 40 million years and died out a million years ago. They stood ten feet high and had straight tusks. The mammoth, which emerged a mere million years ago, had curved tusks, an extra outer layer of hair, could reach a height of 15 feet and survived until 10,000 years ago.

Neither spoke English, used a cell phone or lived long enough to symbolize the Republican Party.

Source: THE HANDY SCIENCE ANSWER BOOK by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh



That thing sings?

It's a smallish, non-descript looking bird. Typically, it might be a dull, mousy, brownish-red. That's the male. If anything, the female is even more dreary-looking. You would pass them both by in the park.

Fortunately for their good name, the male, at least, can sing - like a Luscinia, megarhynchos, or nightingale, because that's what he is.

Source: THE JOY OF TRIVIA



Didja Know...
The British name for the dessert Baked Alaska is 'Flaming Pie?'
(Source: amg.com)

Why is a slow gallop called a "canter?"

Well, since a canter is somewhere between a trot and a gallop, I suppose they could have just combined those two words to make "trollop." But this is about the horse's speed, not its morals.

For the origins of canter, we have to look back to medieval England and the shrine to Thomas a Beckett at Canterbury. Pilgrims traveling there came down the old Kent road on horseback and their steeds were observed to ride in a somewhat odd gait. We don't know if it was the characteristics of the road or the music the horses listened to on their Walkmans - the canter is a 3-beat gait -- that caused this pace. Be that as it may, it became known as the Canterbury gallop, which was finally shortened to canter.

Source: EVER WONDER WHY? By Douglas B. Smith



Somebody always has it worse

In less than four years, you lose your job, run for the state legislature and lose, go into business and fail and then have a nervous breakdown. Later you twice try for a nomination for Congress and lose. You run twice for the U. S. Senate and lose those elections, too. You can't even get nominated for Vice President, the most innocuous job in the world.

What do you do for an encore if you're Abraham Lincoln?

Source: ISAAC ASIMOV'S BOOK OF FACTS



Didja Know...
The last-ever musical guest on the long-running 'Ed Sullivan Show' (airdate: June 6, 1971) was Gladys Knight and the Pips?
(Source: amg.com)

Did Bill Gates once say that computers would never need more than 640K of ram?

According to many people, he said, "640K should be enough for anyone." In fact, he didn't say that or anything like it. He wouldn't have said that anymore than he would have said, "$640,000 should be enough for anyone."

The limitation of 640K of ram on early personal computers had to do with the central processing chip they used and the way it addressed the machine's memory. Actually, there was a total of one megabyte or 1,024K of memory in these machines, but not all of it could be allocated to ram. Gate's company, Microsoft, supplied the operating system, DOS, for the most famous of these machines, the IBM PC. That's how he became linked to that maximum of memory.

So what did Bill Gates actually say? "Monopoly? What monopoly?"

Source: The New York Review of Books



Smarty pants

The next big thing, "smart clothing," is just down the road. Motorola is working on clothes that can communicate with your washing machine, telling it how they want to be washed. Also in the works are fibers that adapt to changes of temperature and pants that take themselves out.

We may even see phones in garments. Hey, what if you're in a big meeting and your crotch starts to ring?

Source: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL



Didja Know...
Supposedly Motley Crue contacted Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder to fill the lead vocalist vacancy when Vince Neil left the band in the early-90's?
(Source: amg.com)

What's Murphy's Law, and who was Murphy?

Murphy's Law states that whatever can go wrong, will. The U.S. Congress didn't create it, although it certainly describes how that august body often operates.

"Murphy" was Ed Murphy, an engineer in the 1940s working on experiments involving the rocket sled. People were strapped into this gizmo, which ran on rails, and then quickly accelerated from a standing start to enormous speeds to see how much they could take. You may have seen films of someone riding in one, their face turning into silly putty under the force of the acceleration. Anyway, one day Murphy commented about a nincompoop of a technician who had miswired some equipment, that "if there's any way to do things wrong, he will." And it caught on.

By the way, the nincompoop, asked to write an apology, broke his pencil, accidentally tore the paper, got up to get another piece, and tripped and broke his leg.

Source: www.wordorigins.com



A lick on a stick, guaranteed to do the trick

We are in the midst of a lollipop renaissance. Manufacturers sold just under $200 million worth in 2000 in the U.S., up from $138 million in 1997. Adults are sucking up some of this output. Upscale packaging, flavors such as Strawberry Parfait and the promise of just 60 calories per pop are aimed at them.

Next thing you know, they'll be advertised as "marital aids."

Source: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL



Didja Know...
Punk rock pioneer Iggy Pop's real name is James Jewel Osterberg?
(Source: EW.com)

Why is the British "Secretary of the Treasury" called the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Doesn't this personage sound like a character in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta? Perhaps someone wearing an elaborate costume with golden epaulets and a red pom-pom on his cap. And singing an aria about how it isn't funny to have to count the money.

More apt might be a character out of Moliere, because the origin of Exchequer is an Old French word, "eschequier." It's that checkered board on which one plays chess or checkers. During the reign of Edward I, a special English court was established to collect royal revenues. It transacted its business on a table covered by a checkered cloth. The Norman invasion of England was still relatively recent and French words were still entering English, including this one.

Say, when a Chancellor of the Exchequer resigns, does that make him an Ex-Chancellor with a Chequered past?

Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD ORIGINS by Jordan Almond



Taxing information

True stories, according to accountants who should know:

A Pittsburgh storeowner paid a man to burn down his business so he could collect the insurance. He almost got away with it, but greed got him when the IRS questioned his deduction of a $10,000 "consulting" fee to the guy who turned out to be the arsonist.

A man actually asked his accountant if he could claim a depletion allowance on a payment for a sperm bank donation.

CBS.MarketWatch.com



Didja Know...
Because of metal shortages arising from war rationing, Academy Awards given during World War II were made mostly of wood?
(Source: Pogolo.com)