Geek off!
 

Some of us know too much about certain odd things. Whether we learn this info through our jobs or our hobbies and interests doesn't matter. I'm talking about facts that really aren't necessary to our daily lives, but that we will carry to our graves anyway.

Show your geek pride by posting those grains of esoterica here. I'll start with a few...

I know chunks of the Dewey Decimal system. Human Body is 610-620. Dinosaurs are 567.9. American History, 973. It's good for me to know, lame for anyone else.

The movie "Wayne's World" cost $14 million to make. In its first weekend it made $18 million. It was released on Feb 14th, 1992.

A-Wings are the fastest of the Wing series in short distances. They are not capable of lightspeed and carry one pilot, making them lightweight. Remember the guy that gets hit and goes kamakazi into a Star Destroyer? (how could you not? ;) ) He was flying an A-Wing. B-Wings have heavy firepower, a 4 man crew, and can do lightspeed - as a result they are the slowest of the Wings. Y-Wings balance speed and firepower, with a 2 man crew. The X-Wings, however, are the most maneuverable, hence their large role in the Death Star trenches.

If I got any of that wrong I hope iSm will forgive me...it's been years since I've read my SW vehicles book.

I feel like I'm such a geek because I can't differentiate between important information and esoterica. In my mind, everything is connected. A conversation about Peter Pan can logically mutate into a conversation about Einsturzende Neubauten in 5 minutes. The more you know, the more you see the connections...

Fibre Channel is a protocol designed to package and transport SCSI commands in a switched network environment across fiber optic cables.

"Fibre" Channel is the correct spelling.

Preach it, Brother!

I think I only knowledge I have is esoteric.

I consider NPR and other public radio as the source of all knowledge.

But aside from that silver microfilm masters can last upwards of 100 year if properly stored in tan environement with temperature ranges between 68-72 degreees and a relative humidity between 40-60%.

Well?

Well what? I can't even begin to compile information.

In a very hypothetical sense, it is estimated that more transistors are produced each day world-wide than the total number of wheels ever made (defining wheels as anything round designed to spin for some mechanical reason, so like gears and stuff count) since man's presumed invention. Again, very hypothetical, but the point is that there are a mind-boggling number of transistors (most contained within silicon microchips) being produced on a daily basis.

Just pick one thing at a time. Like this.

The real chemical used for the drug Ecstacy is MDMA (I've forgotten what it stands for, and I'm not cheating in this thread). MDMA is supposed to last about 6 hours and have very little in the way of "hangover". What people usually end up getting is really MDA, which lasts only about half the time, and is harder on the body, but cheaper to make. Since it comes in a pill or powder form, they can be made with anything, and cutting the drug with all kinds of other stuff is rampant. Hence some "Ecstacy related deaths" are actually due to other drugs present in the pills.

Both MDMA and MDA were originally tested for use in depression therapies, as a "super-prozac". They were also used as appetite suppressants.

I suddenly want to know what you do for a living.

A gummy bear is the same size as a kangaroo joey when it crawls into the mothers pouch.
A parrot can break an almond in a shell, but a gang of children jumping on it, generally cannot.
A bicycle tire tube, cut once so as not a circle anymore, Is roughly the same length as a giraffe tounge.

Bob's Big Boys were/are owned by JW Marriot, they turned them into Allie's or BJ's depending what part of the southwest they were in. Most all of them closed.
Red sneakers were hard to find when Allie's opened. Reebok had just discontinued them.

<snide voice on> Teachers, though they teach children to read, generally do not read themselves, and also generally cannot fathom percentages. <snide voice off>

If you mix muffins too much, the berries will sink.
Bloomed chocolate, with the white haze on it?, is caused by fat rising to the surface. The chocolate got too hot, or too cold, and too fast. It doesnt hurt you.
Caramel and fudge are essentially the same. (With chocolate added.)
Caramel cooks to 215, fudge to 225. 224 for dark fudge.

I should stop now :)

Much Ado About Nothing was first performed in the year 1600. Beavis and Buttheads of the time snickered, because "nothing" was sometimes used as slang for sexuality. As was "wit," a word oft-used in the play. Some scholars think, too, that the word "nothing" was chosen because it was so close to the word "noting," an activity that strings the play together. (Others --including myself-- think this interpretation is silly, since Twelfth Night usese notes even more.)

Neville Longbottom has been using his father's wand for the whole of his time at Hogwarts so far. He hasn't had a lot of success. We were told early on that each wand chooses the wizard. Neville's wand broke at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I wonder what will happen when Neville is finally chosen by a wand of his own?

JK Rowling gets very close to revealing important information, but will always interrupt the question or conversation that is about to occur right before that information is revealed. This was only initially recognized in hindsite. (Hey! If he wasn't interrupted, he would have found out the truth about Hagrid's expulsion right away! and so on.) Now that the trick is known, you can keep an eye out for interruptions, as invariably, they are important clues. The only notable interruption in Order of the Phoenix was when Harry asked Snape why he called Voldemort "the dark lord" when Harry'd only heard death eaters call him that. Oop! Interruption before the answer. In a side note, there is one other person who has used "the dark lord" before-- Ginny, during her stint in Voldemort's sway, called Harry "the hero who conquered the dark lord" in her Valentine poem.

Read your insurance policy closely. Often times the fatcats at your preferred (or designated) company will sneak in hidden fees or limits for certain procedures. For instance, many policies feature an annual cap on durable medical equipment (hearing aids, prosthetics, CPAP machines for nighttime breathing) that is about $2000. One CPAP alone can run you $2000, so you'd better not also be a one-legged deaf man with sleep apnea. Or you'd better get supplemental insurance.

It is rumored-- but not proven-- that Orson Welles went to Steven Spielberg for funding for his final picture. Spielberg refused him.

Alexander Payne used leitmotifs in "Election" which include requent images and references to garbage and fruit.

Hey now now.....I'm a teacher who reads incessantly...but I'm sure you're talking about a certain teacher in particular, Ponine. ;) And fractions....gotta say I didn't learn them in school. I learned them at Nordstrom during sales. And that's how I've taught fractions to my old two--in the real world, usually involving pizza. The schools teach fractions in a crap way.

Hhhmmm.....my useless knowledge....comes from Tiger Beat and Bop and 16 circa 1984.

Okay. Here's the cast of The Outsiders:

C. Thomas Howell was Pony Boy Curtis (the C stands for Christopher...named after his dad who was a successful stunt man in the movies. Tommy Howell's first movie was E.T. He was handpicked off the set....his dad was working on E.T.....by Steven Spielberg. He played one of the older brothers friends--was in the poker scene at the beginning and then on the bikes later on.)
Rob Lowe was Soda Pop
Patrick Swayze was Darry
Leif Garrett was.....Bob? Can't remember, but he died.
Diane Lane was Sherry (Cherry) Valance
Matt Dillon was Dallas
Ralph Macchio was Johnny
Tom Cruise was Steve
Emilio Estevez was Two Bit (love the Mickey shirt!)
Darren Dalton was Randy the Soc

I jonesed for all these guys at one point or another in my adolescence. I used to have a mental imdb of every single freaking movie all of them have been in, together and separately. For example, Tommy Howell and Patrick Swayze were in Grandview USA together (Jennifer Jason Leigh was in that and The Hitcher with Tommy Howell). They were also in Red Dawn, with Darren Dalton and Charlie Sheen, Emilio's brother. And Patrick Swayze was in Dirty Dancing with Jennifer Grey who was in Red Dawn. Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze were also in Youngblood together. And Rob Lowe and Jennifer Grey were in a crappy French Cinderella movie that I watched FAR too many times in high school.

Man...if I morphed into the random people in the John Hughes movies or any of the John Cusack movies.....this could go on all day.

And any mistakes are because of my aged brain.

some music stuff:

he Looney Tunes theme is called "The Merry Go Round Broke Down" - Daffy Duck sings a special version of it in his first appearance.

"Minnie's Yoo Hoo" is the only song for which Walt Disney got a writing credit.

Frank Sinatra used to sing the Beatles' "Something" at live concerts and credit it to Lennon & McCartney. The song was written by George Harrison.

Louis Jordan was stabbed by his wife. In bed. And lived.

Hüsker Dü means "can you remember"

Bobby Darin sings the theme for "That Darn Cat" but his version is not on any of the official soundtrack releases.

Jim Carroll was holding the tape recorder when the Velvet Underground's "Live at Max's Kansas City" was recorded.

I, too, know chunks of the Dewey. My favorites are Travel (917 area), Art History (early 700s) and Chicken Soup for the Soul (158.128).

Early firehouses had spiral staircases so that the horses pulling the fire wagons couldn't walk up the stairs to the sleeping quarters.


The dot above the lowercase letter "I" is called a tittle.

"/" is a virgule

A trichinobezoar is an extreme hairball that can be found in the stomach or intestines. Some people have to have them surgically removed. Hair is indigestible (which explains why cats spit of hairballs). It was once believed that bezoars could act as universal antidote to any poison.

Bluestocking means a woman with scholarly or literary interests. The name came from The Blue Stocking Society, nickname for a mostly female literary club in 18th Century London. Don’t know much about the club, but I came across the word in Vanity Fair.

According to Scientific American, parallel universes are real. I hope SA is right. Cause that's disturbing and cool.

I have some weird favorite body parts. Like the epiglottis. It's just so fascinating. I touch mine sometimes and it retracts...makes me gag of course, but it's just so darn cool, the functionality of it. I also am fond of my uvula, but I've never tried to touch it. It looks fragile all hangy dangy back there in my mouth. My sister is obsessed with her puncta, which is that little gland/pore thing in your inner eye. Are you touching yours? I'm touching mine. I also adore a good medulla oblongata. They turn me on.

I'm folding. I feel like I'm being virtually surrounded by a bunch of brainiacs much brainier than I am.

I'm going back to picking at my belly button lint and daydreaming about having sex with Alaskan crab fisherman. And then eating a lot of crab afterwards.

Every good geek-off needs a link to a site where people post pictures of building computers into strange objects - like 5-litre Molson beer cans, boxes made of Legos, cigar humidors, and um... old computers http://mini-itx.com/projects/atari800/

"Immaculate conception" refers to Mary being born free from the original sin normally passed from parent to off-spring as a result of the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden; it is not synonmous with "virgin birth."

Those funny english words like "knife" and "gnat"? They used to be pronounced like they're spelled. "What" and "where" used to be "hwaet" and "hwere."

People in the "middle ages" did not uses spices to disguise spoiled meat. 1) spices were enormously expensive. More so than buying fresh meat. 2) do you think that medieval people could eat spoiled meat and not get sick any more than you could?

I used to be intimately familiar with the Dewey sections for cookbooks, travel, and biology. (I used to shelve books.)

I have pre-1600 recipes for: french toast, pancakes, fried cheese sticks, and ravioli.

Autoimmune diseases are illinesses where your own body starts producing natural chemicals that attack your body by mistake. It is thought that there is a genetic factor in all autoimmune diseases, although the same disease may not be passed down.

For example, my father had a very severe and rare autoimmune disease called Polymyocytis where a natural occuring enzyme was attacking and distroying his muscles, rendering him unable to walk or care for himself. My autoimmune disease was Grave's Disease which develops in the thyroid. Graves causes your thyroid (which regulates metabolism) to overproduce the thyroid hormone and can lead to severe heart problems, eye problems and a host of other diseases.

My Father's disease was not diagnosed in time to stop it's onslaught. Mine was and was treated by killing my thyroid with radioactive iodine. There is an un-proven coorelation between Grave's Disease and Breast Cancer (which I had both at the same time).

Most autoimmune diseases effect women.

Other autoimmune diseases include:
Fibro Myalgia
Lupus
Chronic Fatigue Syndrom
Multiple Sclerosis
Rheumatoid arthritis

But there are many, many more.

Oh, and somewhere in a box in my condo is my translation of Beowulf from old english into modern. Done by me. The whole damn thing.

And that little "hat" over the 'o' in the french word hotel indicates that an 's' used to follow: hostel.

I know I know gobs more of these, but I'm so accustomed to knowing them that it doesn't seem odd. Doesn't everyone know this stuff? is what my brain says.

The maximum ammount of RAM a standard home computer (and most high end servers, for that matter) can have installed is 4 gigabytes. This is because they use 32-bit adresses to reference locations in the RAM. Each address points to 1 byte of memory. So there can be a maximum of 2^32 bytes, which is 4 gigabytes. There are 64-bit systems being made which use memory addresses that are 64 bits long. That's approximately 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of possible memory.

Very cool. I really like Beowulf. Heaney's translation is lovely. I was also quite taken with his introduction.

That took me right back to my high school experience on the Northen Oregon Coast! Yeehaw!!

Speaking of the Northern Oregon Coast, that whale in Free Willy that made that big leap out of the water and over the Columbia River Bar and jetty? A robotic whale. Yes. A robot.

My brain says the same thing for a lot of my esoterica. So if I post something everyone knows, it's because I can't tell the difference.

I just added "The Outsiders" to my Netflix list. I've never seen it. :eek: Claire, your mentions of this movie finally piled up enough to make me want to see it. :D

Lewis Carroll did take pictures of little girls, but it is still widely believed that he was not a true pedophile and never did anything to a child. He may have done hallucinogenics, as many druggies claim, but there is no good evidence for this.

I would go on about Carroll and Alice but I know Prudence could easily nail me on screw ups. I have a copy of Annotated Alice and I love it, but I definitely bow to Prudence's obvious superiority on the topic. :cheers:

People always complain that computers and the internet are going to make books extinct. Yet what was the first truly successful internet business? Amazon.com, who originally sold only books.

The library I work in is 120 years old. Ok, not the building, but still. For you non-So-Cal people - 120 is OLD out here.

Eucalyptus trees absorb tons of water. They were used by Israelis to clear out swamps and help stabilize marshy land into a place to grow crops. I don't know if Irvine used to be a swamp, but it's covered in the damn things. Mr. Irvine loved them and used them to mark off the land in rows. Many of these rows are still there with 100 year old trees along them. I believe the rows make mile squares, but I'm not totally sure.

Farenheit 451, a book about censorship, has been censored many, many times.

After the Northridge quake the insurance industry shut down earthquake insurance for some time (I think 2 years) while they restructured the entire system. They were forced to cover all kinds of stuff that wasn't clearly worded in their policies. When they did offer it again, for years afterward it was very expensive and covered barely anything. I don't know the status now, as it's been years since I've worked in insurance.

When Progressive Insurance's commercials say that they tell you what the competitor's rates are just to be fair, they're being misleading. When you call "Progressive" you're actually calling an insurance agent who sells insurance with many different companies. Of course, he looks at all the rates and offers you the best one, not because he's a nice guy from Progressive, but because he isn't from Progressive at all. Same goes for Mercury and tons of other companies.

Ringo was the first to quit the Beatles. He said he quit and stayed away from the studio for a few weeks during the recording of the White Album. The drums on "The Ballad of John and Yoko" are played by Paul McCartney. Ringo was very hurt by the fact that they could get along without him. Eventually they sweet-talked Ringo back.

When you take "Glass Onion" and try to extract hidden meanings from it, John Lennon is laughing at you. He said as many "hidden" things as he could, since he was sick of everyone making every song sound like it was about drugs or band drama or what have you.

Cinderella's slipper was probably fur; the french words for "fur" and "glass" sound very similar -- probably identical to the english-speaking ear. Ermine slippers are a tad more practical than glass. (Actually, the word for "earthworm" also sounds very similar. There's an interesting visual.)

... including Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Perpera (ITP.) This is my mother's auto-immune disease. If she were not taking steroids for it, her immune system would be, in essence, consuming all of her blood cells. It still is, but instead of having between a normal 200 and 500 part-per-(billion?) count, she's having a good day if it's above 50. This causes extreme exhaustion and fatigue, bleeding from mucous membranes, and other internal bleeding.

There is no cure for ITP. It's idiopathic; they don't know what causes it. It is not genetic. There are links between use of blood thinners and auto-immune diseases but no concrete research has been done. Mom's been on blood thinners since 1979.

Few ITP patients have lived longer than ten years with the disease. Generally, patients die from complications from the steroids, not from internal bleeding; addiction to steroids requires a continual raising of the steroid level. Possible complications include: diabetes, high blood pressure, water retention, weight gain, changed appetite, general fogginess and memory loss, loss of vision, arthritis, and cancer.

In the eight years Mom has had ITP, she's had all of these side effects.

You know what's weird....I'm waiting on Courtney to clean her room right now so we can watch it together in a few minutes. She got in the car after school and asked if we could watch it when we got home, and I started thinking about this thread and it sounded pretty good to me. Hope you like it! It's a little schlocky, but very true to the book and fun to watch all these actors as they were starting out.

More "White Album" trivia:

The bass on "I Will" is just Paul sing "dummm, dummm, dummm, dum dum..."

Martha in "Martha, My Dear" is Paul's sheepdog

Sadie in "Sexy Sadie" is the Maharishi

Prudence in "Dear Prudence" is Mia Farrow's sister

"Don't Pass Me By" is the only Beatles song for which Ringo received full writing credits

The 'Number nine, number nine... ' in "Revolution #9" is said to have come from a BBC recording. When reversed, many believe that it says "Turn Me On Dead Man"

There are many "clues" to the "Paul is Dead" rumor on the White Album. Another one is the spoken bit after "I'm So Tired," which, when played backwards conspiracy theorists claim says "Paul's a dead man. Miss him. Miss him. Miss him."

"Blackbird" is a song about equal rights.

Eric Clapton plays the guitar solo on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
(Later, Clapton will write "Layla" about his love for George Harrison's wife Patti, who he would eventually hook up with)

I'm trying to think of a way to convey the vast quantities of useless knowledge I've accumulated on medieval heresies. I can't. There's just too much of it. I can go on for hours. (Literally! Several times I've taught a 2-hour intro to heresies class.)

I classify them into three different groups. First are the reformers. These are your Waldensians, Humiliati, Arnoldists, Priscillians, etc... To generalize, reformer groups typically engaged in lay preaching (a no-no) and believed that the Church and all true Christians should abandon all wealth, including land (oddly enough not popular with the Church). Many groups rejected sacraments performed by any clergy who retained possessions (annoying!) and several groups allowed women considerable involvement (egads!) The Church used several methods to deal with reformer groups, including banning/persecuting them heavily and opening arms wide to bring them into the church and let them practice their asceticism by joining various orders.

Major category number two were the dualists -- often called gnostics in the literature, but I prefer dualist because it conveys more immediately the core belief in two opposing forces -- good and evil. Evil is not the subordinate it is in orthodoxy. In general, dualists believe that all matter is evil and the spirit/light is good. They were totally chaste, chosing to avoid all physical contact. (And creating new evil bodies trapping good spirits is a badness.) They were also vegetarians -- as the product of coition was by definition evil. (How to tell if your neighbor is a Cathar? Make them kill and eat a chicken.) The big baddies in this genre were the Manichaeans, who were quite the evangelical group back in the third century. Europe, Africa, even into China. Gave Christianity a real run for its money. The Manis were this weird blend of religions. Totally insane. It would take me pages to go into it. (Melons are luminous foods = good! Eat the melons to release the light inside!) The Church was in a total panic. Augustine was very nearly beside himself with terror. For centuries the Church was en garde, watching for the Manis to come back. Some speculate that pockets of them survived, travelling to what is now Bulgaria and becoming Bogomils. Regardless, Bogomils are another dualist sect active about 1000 years later. Many speculate that crusaders brought back Bogomil beliefs, thus leading to the dreaded Cathars. Cathars were everywhere. Cathars in a particular region were Albigensians and merited their own crusade. Quite the tizzy. Apparently no one ever had the bright idea to just let them go not have sex with one another and let nature run its course.

(Actually, throughout western history, anyone who claimed to be holier was accused of having nightly orgies, resulting in illicit off-spring who were ground up and consumed as "tasty baby cakes" -- a perversion of the sacrament of communion. The primary documentation is a hoot.)

And then there are the others -- the Arians (quick - let's have the Council of Nicea and vote on which one's the heresy!), the later period political-religious groups (Lollards and Hussites), and so forth. Ooh. and the Amalricians, who believed the God *was* the universe -- in each little twig and pebble. Damn tree-hugger hippy-dippys.

See? I could go on for days. It's nutty.

Almost no insurance copmany offers their own independent earthquake coverage anymore. However, they are required to offer all of their customers participation in a California state earthquake insurance policy. Basically, it offers (pretty limited) coverage at prices determined by the state. The financial backing for these policies is spread across all insurance providers licensed in California according to size of the compay, how many customers they have, how many participate in the plan, and other factors. This way, no company has to assume more risk than they are able to handle while consumers still have at least one option for earthquake coverage.

One of the ways insurance companies ended up paying out more than expected after the Northridge earthquake was due to the fact that several home owners that did not carry earthquake insurance were still able to succesfully make claims. How? Most standard homeowners policies insure against "collapse". Depending on the type of policy, if it did not specify that earthquakes were excluded as a covered cause of collapse, and the house did indeed collapse, the policy had to be paid.

The term for this service is called a "brokerage". The other key difference is that a broker collects their fee from their clients, while an agent collects it from the specific insurance company to whom they are appointed. Although the term "broker" and "agent" are only loosely defined and carry the exact same licensing requirements.

Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim share a birthday (though Sondheim is a few years older.)

Many years, they take great pleasure in throwing simultaneous parties-- and seeing who gets the most guests.

I share my birthday with Harry S. Truman (though a couple years apart). My sister's birthday is the the anniversary of Harry S. Truman's death (also a couple years apart).

The "S" in Harry S. Truman does not technically stand for anything. Unable to decide on whether to name him after his grandfather on his mother's side or his father's side, his parents decided to split the difference and just go with "S", an initial in both of their names. Many people don't follow the "S" with a period since it's not really an abbreviation, however Harry himself wrote it with a period.

There are also many clues on both Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper. Focusing on Sgt Pepper, there is a grave of marijuana leaves on the cover, along with somone holding an extended palm over McCartney's head, which signifies in some cultures that a person is dead. He supposedly died in a car crash (He blew his mind out in a car). And he died on Wednesday morning, at five o' clock ( a lyric that George is pointing to on the back cover). There is a bass guitar (Paul's instrument) made of flowers. It only has 3 strings, rather than the typical four, as in, there are only 3 of 4 Beatles alive. Paul has his back to the camera on the back photo, while all the others are facing forward. The songs introduce a new person, "Billy Spears", who is the supposed replacement for McCartney ("I don't really want to stop the show"). Others claim that the replacement was an english actor named William Campbell, who interestingly enough is in an original Star Trek episode. He bears a slight resemblence to McCartney but nothing to write home about.

Sgt Pepper is also interesting in that it was the first album ever to have the entire lyrics printed on it. It is the first to have songs that seamlessly run into each other, rather than there being a silence in between.

That's all I can remember from memory. :)

Other musical tidbits...

Buddy Rich, one of the finest jazz drummers to ever live couldn't read a note of music.

Eubie Blake, composer and pianist, only played in the key of C. He had a special piano made that allowed him to shift the entire keyboard up a half-step, allowing him to play in C#.

Elvis Presley's favorite music to sing was gospel.

"Georgia (on my mind)" was not written by Ray Charles but by Hoagy Carmichael

Brian Jones (Rolling Stones), Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Kobain all died at the age of 27.

Since The Beatles seems to be a popular topic here...

Which of the four Beatles has had the most #1 hits as a solo artist since the Beatles broke up?

You might be surpised to hear it is Ringo Starr. Most all of Paul McCartney's hits have either been with the Wings or in duets.

The current Power Mac G5's (with dual 2 or 2.5 GHz processors) can accomodate up to 8 GB of SDRAM since they are built with a 64 bit architecture.
____________
And on the subject of computers, I was told that a 100 Base-T is not 10X faster than a 10 Base-T connection. More like 1.6X faster (though I am sure GD knows MUCH more about this than I do).

the key to Einstein's Theory of Relativity is, ironically, the fact that the speed of light is NOT relative.

Almost all full color printed images (magazines, brochures, newspapers, posters, etc.) are created with just four colors: Yellow, Magenta, Cyan and Black. Technically speaking, black isn't really needed, but due to the limitations in printing inks, papers, and processes, black is used to enhance definition and detail.

I could bore everyone stiff talking about printing.

You've got to get out more if talking about printing gets you stiff.

The idiom "flash in the pan" comes from the world of musketry. The small charge of gun powder that is lit by the flint that then subsequently lights the gunpowder inside the powder sits in what's called a "pan". Occasionally, if the charge isn't loaded right, or perahps the powder's a little wet, or the cosmos just aren't alligned right, the powder in the pan ignites, but fails to ignite the charge in the barrel. This causes a "flash in the pan".

"Taking a pot shot" comes from the unsportsmanlike act of shooting a bird on the ground (to fill your pot, presumably).

Though not a 100% absolute, hardwoods (an official classification of wood - think oak, cherry, walnut, etc.) come from trees that shed their leaves in the winter (there is probably a name for this, I just don't know what it is). Softwoods (pine, douglas fir, etc.) come from evergreens. These designations (hardwood and softwood) have nothing to do with the hardness of the wood.

Balsa wood is a hardwood.

TWAIN, the technology often used with scanners stands for Technology Without An Interesting Name.

I don't know what the actual shedding of leaves is called, but the trees that do it are all called deciduous trees.

when it comes to guages (in wiring and piercings) the larger the guage, the smaller it actually is.

The Apollo command module was only 10.6 feet tall and 12.8 feet wide

it takes 1400 lbs of pressure to crush the human skull

More library dorkiness: Mr. Dewey recommended women for the job of librarians because they are (supposedly) good at doing tedious tasks like housework without going crazy.

You can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish

Okay, I sent this to someone after they said they were interested in learning my above tidbit about relativity. He suggested I actually post it here. So, um, here you go...Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity 101 (surprisingly intuitive!)

First, the Assumptions
1) The observer has no acceleration. That's what makes this the "Special" theory as opposed to the "general" theory. Acceleration seriously complicates things. We're talking situations where the environments are at constant velocity. (in our example, we'll be talking about 1 person standing still, and 1 person on a train moving at constant velocity)

2) The speed of light is constant, no matter how the observer is moving relative to it. So, unlike other matter, there are no "related rates". You know how if a car is going 60 miles per hour, and you are going 20 miles per hour in the same direction, then the car, from your point of view is going 40 miles per hour? Not so with light. From everyone's perspective, at any speed, in any direction, light moves at the speed of light. Crazy, but true (been proven experimentally).

The Setup
Imagine a clock. This is a REALLY big clock. It looks something like this...

---------
----|
----|
----|
--------
----^

The blue dealy is a light emitter/sensor. The red lines is the path of the emitted light. The top is a mirror. The mirror at the top is spaced such that it takes exactly 1 second for a photom emitted from the emitter to go up, reflect off the mirror, and return to the sensor (call the total distance traveled up and back N).

Now, place this clock on a moving train.

The payoff

Okay, so, there's someone on the train watching this clock. He sees the photon travel from the bottom, reflect off the top and return to the sensor. It travels a distance of N, as we've already determined. It does this at the speed of light, so it takes 1 second (N/speed of light = 1 second). Fair enough, we've already agreed that this is how the clock is designed.

Now, the train car is made of glass, and there's someone standing still outside of the train observing this. Here's the path of the photon that this observer sees.

---------------
----------|
-------|-----|
----|-----------|
---- ------------ ----
----^-----------^

It's emitted from the bottom. By the time it reaches the mirror at the top (we know it reaches it and hits it in the middle beause that's what the observer on the train sees), that mirror has moved with the train. It reflects, and by the time it returns to the sensor at the bottom, the bottom has moved again. So the path is a basically a triangle (minus one side).

Now, some basic trig proves that that path is longer than N. And we're assuming that the speed of light is constant, no matter where the observer is. So, the light has now traveled a distance greater than N, at the same speed. That means it must take longer than 1 second. (N+x/speed of light > 1 second)

So voila, you have two people observing the exact same event, and seeing it take 2 different ammounts of times. Relativity.

More than you ever cared to know, I'm sure, but I love explaining it because once you accept the very simple assumption that the speed of light is constant, the rest is VERY intuitive, most people are susprised at how much sense it makes.

I wonder is 19th century librarians were laudenum addicts too - oops wrong thread.

The easiest way for a horn player to alter his tone is to get a new horn with a different brass. The type of brass used in construction greatly changes that horn’s voice. The most common type is "Yellow Brass." It's straight brass (with a small amount of zinc,) and is basically the starting point. It's got a bright, even tone. "Rose Brass," an alloy of brass and copper, has a mellower, richer tone. Gold plated brass, because gold is such a soft metal, has the mellowest tone and is great for blues or cool jazz. Silver plating, because it resonates at a slightly higher frequency, gives a brighter, crisper tone and is greatly favored by trumpet players, leads especially, because they need to cut through the band and deliver the lead line. Some horns are now also being made with anodized nickel over the brass. The horn is covered with a powder, put into an acid bath and shot with a current of electricity. The nickel bonds to the brass and, depending on what mixture of nickel is used, can color the horn black, gray, silver, or many other shades. This coating also changes the horns voice and allows the creation of a horn perfectly voiced to the player's own style.

Also, when listening to a horn player, the sound you're hearing is actually being created between that players lungs and mouth. The instrument is only a resonating chamber. That's why a master player can be instantly recognized merely by listening to a few notes. Their tone is as personal and distinctive as their own voice.

A penny fits in my nose.

A parking space is typically 9 foot by 18 foot (your space may vary depending on where you live)

I've been a fan of the same baseball club since 1970.

I love playing Arcade classics that I've downloaded to my cell phone! I'm addicted to Bejewled, I've already beaten Joust a squillion times (I've always been geeky for Joust), and am currently obsessed with Dig Dug. I also play Ms. Pac-Man (a neccessity), Simon & Frogger. My game playing used to be just something to occupy my time while at the Doctor's office. However, I find myself playing at home, usually when I can't sleep. I rarely, if ever, use my cellphone to talk.

I'm ashamed to admit this, but my cellphone has become a glorified Gameboy. :(

If you overlay two maps of medieval Europe, one showing major areas of witch burnings, and another of major rye growing areas, you will find a near perfect match.
In "The Crucible", the description of Tituba making a "witch cake" describes her making it with rye. Ergot poisoning (ergotism), which comes from consuming rye stricken with the fungus ergot, has the following symptoms (courtesy of wikipedia):

Convulsive symptoms
Convulsive symptoms include diarrhea, paresthesias, itching, seizures, headaches, nausea and vomiting. Usually the gastrointestinal effects precede CNS effects. As well as seizures there can be hallucinations and mental effects including mania or psychosis. The convulsive symptoms are caused by clavine alkaloids.

Gangreneous symptoms
The dry gangrene is a result of vasoconstriction induced by the ergotamine-ergocristine alkaloids of the fungus. It effects the more poorly vascularized distal structures, such as the fingers and toes. Symptoms include desquamation, weak peripheral pulse, loss of peripheral sensation, edema and ultimately the death and loss of affected tissues.

Which is similar to the claims of witch burners against the accused.

Oooh! Morigoon, you and I can debate the Salem ergot connection! (I'm partial to the socio-economic map theory and not such a big fan of the ergot story.)

Europe, though, is another story. Have you read "The Night Battles"? Groovy Italian goings-on. If not, you should give it a looksee. And then check out "Servants of Satan," officially the cheesiest cover in the witchypoo section of my library. Oooh! There's a German one too that I can't remember or find on the shelf. All I can remember is that it's from the author's doctoral work, published after her tragic death from slipping on wet rock while on vacation in some place like Jamaica. How's that for useless info.

The phrase, "tie goes to the runner" is not found anywhere in the offical MLB rulebook, nor, I assume, in any little league rulebook either. It's somehow one of the most well known baseball "rules" anyway.

When I was a student at San Diego State, Tony Gwynn held quite a few of the school's basketball records. (I think some of them are held by other players by now.) I honestly thought it was a misprint the first time I read that. Then I found out that he was drafted out of college, not only by the San Diego Padres, but also by the San Diego Clippers. His mother told him to choose baseball.

No Padres pitcher has ever pitched a no hitter.

No Padres hitter has ever hit for the cycle (single, double, triple, home run all in one game.)

No professional San Diego sports team has ever won the highest championship game in their sport.

Prior to the Red Sox last season, no MLB team had ever been down three playoff games and come back to win.

Speaking of English taste in fashion, Elizabethans had fabulous color names -- like Horseflesh, Maiden's Blush, Goose-Turd Green, and my favorite guess-which-country-we-hate color: Dead Spaniard.