I wonder if anyone pointed out to the people who named USS Ponce, that in the UK it means 'flamboyantly gay'.
USS PONCE (LPD15) "The Proud Lions!"
Trivia - Pandoras 'box' was a mistranslation.
Pandora - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The mistranslation of pithos as "box" is usually attributed to the sixteenth century humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam when he translated Hesiod's tale of Pandora. Hesiod uses the word "pithos" which refers to a jar used to store grain. It is possible that Erasmus confused "pithos" with "pyxis" which means box. The scholar M.L. West has written that Erasmus may have mixed up the story of Pandora with the story found elsewhere of a box which was opened by Psyche
Trains Planes and Ruby on Rails - Is speed the most important thing for a successful startup?
Twenty years ago, I was reading a Graham Greene novel on a painfully slow train ride in Italy. In the book, he pointed out that your mood as a train traveller was directly proportional to speed.
Evan posts today about how the mood a Twitter HQ is directly proportional to the speed of the site.
I've noticed that many people running startups seem to have moods that are directly proportional to their Alexa rank.
I'd argue that fast response time is the unwritten golden rule of successful web apps. A site that is slow is like wading through mud. Before Youtube I could watch video on the web, but before Youtube, my expectation was that it would splutter and stall.
I suspect that focusing on speed is much healthier than traffic or, dare I say it, features. If you built a product with one great feature and make it fast, your traffic will come, people will understand what its about and the extra features can be added later.
Google had less accurate search than Altavista for a long time after they became hip (you couldn't do exact phrase matching because 'stop' words like 'the, of, and or' etc. weren't indexed), but Google was always blindingly fast and they kept focused on one things even as CMGI made Altavista pour portal crap around their nice search page.
And anyway, Graham Greene said nothing about Alexa.
According to a British Coffee Association spokesperson (with a vested interest), its 4.5 cups a day:
"a wealth of scientific evidence suggests that moderate coffee consumption of four to five cups per day is perfectly safe for the general population and does have a beneficial effect on alertness and performance even in regular coffee drinkers"
BBC NEWS | Health | Coffee 'no boost in the morning'
Swiss Army Invades Liechtenstein.
170 troops wandered accross the border during night time exercises, by mistake, causing much embarassment.
Perhaps the US government will accuse the Swiss of harboring Weapons of Mass Destruction in the form of Swiss Army Knives?
A holiday tradition, for me and my dad:
The 102nd King William's College Quiz is out.
Following Jason's My Year in Cities, 2006 (kottke.org).
Here's lists of cities visited this year:
(The reason I'm doing this is I'm collecting lists for some new Wists features, which I'll be able to show shortly).
New York, NY
Philadelpia, PA
Austin, TX
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
London, England
Geneva, Switzerland
Paris, France
Barcelona, Spain
and bonnie Selkirk!
Study finds that wearing a cycling helmet increases your chance of being hit by a car.
Wearing a long flowing wig provides the greatest protection.
BBC NEWS | UK | England | Somerset | Wearing helmets 'more dangerous'
What is both rare and everywhere?
- Uranium is rare, but everywhere.
One ton of an ordinary rock, such as granite, contains 16g of Thorium and Uranium.
A kilogram of Uranium is equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT, which is approx. the same as the energy potential of 20,000 tons of gasoline.
One ton of common-or-garden rock contains the equivalent fuel of 320 tons of gasoline. It could take a lot less than that to extract it.
Until recently, what did environmentalists and Car/Oil companies have in common?
- A reason to hate nuclear power.
It used to be very easy to make a case against nuclear energy, and if you are either a treehugger or a oil exec. you would be historically allied.
Dolphins have had a rough time lately, they used to be considered intelligent and kind - then researchers pointed out that they gang rape females to death when mating.
Now it turns out they they may not even be intelligent. In fact they may be not be much smarter than a goldfish.
Their big brains are mostly fat with very few neurons.
Research shows dolphins dimwitted but happy
Want to work out compound interest rates in your head?
Use the Rule of 72
ln 2 is 69.3% - which is approximately equal to 70 which is close to 72 - which has many factors making it easy to do mental division.
So to work out compound interests rates' doubling times divide 72 by the Interest rate.
At 6% $100 becomes $200 in 72/6 = 12 years
I just saw an ad for a whole roast chicken - for under $2. $2 to raise, kill, prepare and cook an animal. So I did some research to see just how insanely cheap mechanized farming produce has become.
In the middle ages, an unplucked, unroasted chicken cost 5/8 of the daily wage of a master mason. This was a very highly paid and esteemed position for the day, but lets be conservative and assume that the equivalent would be someone on a current US salary of $60K per annum.
This would mean that a chicken cost around $150.
Gives some kind of perpective on what pumping oil into the ground and hormones into mammals can do.
The site below has some really interesting data on medieval food.
Spices and Their Costs in Medieval Europe
Daniel Kottke.
Not Leo.
If He's So Smart...Steve Jobs, Apple, and the Limits of Innovation
The Food Timeline: food history reference & research service
"Ever wonder what foods the Vikings ate when they set off to explore the new world? How Thomas Jefferson made his ice cream? What the pioneers cooked along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip...and why? Welcome to the Food Timeline."
"This map of the world is made from sunburnt skin peeled from my backside during a holiday in Central America."
Don't read lists of how to be more productive.
My father and I always look forward to competing on who can finish it first, every year:
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | And here's the hard one ...
Not needing an umbrella, due to the clement weather, she furled the small, weildy flag with both hands, full of ruth at one so vincible, pervious to her own pain. Although he had been maculate, with peccable taste, he was gainly and couth and his love for her was truly requited...
1. Most Romans were on welfare.
2. Many Roman citizens living in Rome were not 'Italian', but anything from German to Indian.
3. Rome had an African Emperor, Severus.
4. The last Roman Emperor had the same name as the first - Romulus.
5. Rome was only ever defeated by the French and the Romanians.
6. Rome had a population of a million.
7. Julius Caesar wiped out a million French in genocide.
8. Romans thought that pants were girly.
9. Pagan Rome could absorb other cultures by absorbing their gods. Monotheism made this impossible, and martyrdom made it impossible to attack. Christianity was one of the major reasons that Rome ultimately fell and Europe slipped into the dark ages. It only really emerged when secular culture and scientific reason developed in Italy after the middle ages with people like Galileo.
Frontpage -- The Ammianus Marcellinus Online Project
The real reason that I wanted to build Wists, was to re-enact a long time fantasy where I would be asked to appear on Desert Island Disks, a long running radio show in the UK where you had to imagine you were stranded on a desert island with your favorite songs and had to explain why you chose them and what they meant to you.
So, being a list geek, I have put together my Desert Island Wists, tagging my favorite books, movies, albums and, of course, buildings with the tags topten=buildings etc. (Desert Island Disks only allows you 8 songs and 1 book - but this is the web and I want 10 of everything).
Here they are:
No axe to grind here, was just curious, so dug around the web for some data:
Cost of Iraq/Afghan war so far: $300 billion
(From end 2001 till end of this year)
Cost per year: $75 billion
Number of tax payers in the US: 130 million
Average cost of campaign per taxpayer: $2300
Average cost per year per taxpayer: $575
Average cut for Bush's 2003 tax cuts, per person: $1,083
(Median, i.e. most likely tax cut per person was $227)
Instructions on chopsticks are always fascinating, but this was a classic:
From disposable chopsticks in a Thai restaurant:
"Welcome to Chinese Restaurant.
Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticke the traditional and trpical of Chinese glorious history and cultual" [sic]
Wikipedia now has an entry for Web 2.0.
Call me old fashioned, but since everything on the web seems to be in Beta for years, shouldn't Web 1.0 now be called Web 0.9?
I think I'll call Wists, Wists Gamma.
Google Video Search, boing boing :
... Eh-oh! Hee Hee! [Humming] dipsy! Hee Hee! Hee Hee... Whee! Wow! Yay! Ha Ha! Dipsy! Hee Hee! Ooh! Look! Yay, dipsy! Narrator: Circle. [Boing boing] [boing boing] [Boing boing] [boing boing] [squish] [squish] Hee Hee! Laa-laa Ball! Hee Hee! Uh-oh! Hee Hee! Ooh! Oh, dear! Hee Hee!...
PFK Fish News | Deep sea fish in hoax tsunami email
"An email containing photographs of bizarre-looking deep sea fish reportedly washed up on Thailand's Phuket beach after the tsunami actually contains images of fish collected during a study undertaken in 2003."
Nonetheless the fish are deeply weird and interesting, check them out.
BBC: dentists find nail in skull.
OK - so that is pretty weird to start with, but -
"Doctors at the hospital said it was the second time a patient had failed to notice a nailgun had fired a nail into their heads."
!!!
"after months of research, experts believe they may now hold the key to the 250-year-old code, which is carved on a monument at the Earl of Lichfield's Shugborough Hall estate in Staffordshire.
The Shepherd's Monument, commissioned in 1748 by the then earl, Thomas Anson, features a carved image of a Nicolas Poussin painting with the letters D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. underneath.
The cryptic inscription was rumoured to point to the location of the Holy Grail - the cup Jesus is said to have used at the Last Supper."
Two things:
1. Any code this short is difficult to crack without resorting to other clues in the context.
2. There is a huge incentive to subconsciously or consciously accept the context of the connections to the Holy Grail, particularly at a time when the Da Vinci Code book is generating a boatload of cash around Holy Grail seeker tourist sites.
Perhaps D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. means:
DaVinci Owes Us Our Share Verify A Very Valuable Message
Scotsman.com News - Top Stories - Code cracked as hunt for Grail goes on
At Web 2.0 and Jeff Bezos is presenting, showing his Amazon homepage. In the top right corner is 'Jeff's Gold Box'.
Presumably Jeff's Gold Box contains, well, gold bars.
If you take the current Olympic medals table (ranked by number of golds) and re-order the top 20 gold medal winners to those listed by number of people per gold medal, according to population figures, the rankings are somewhat different.
By this measure, the leader, Australia, is 7 times more athletic than the US and 30 times more than China. Greece is doing well with its home advantage at number 2.
Rank:
1. Australia
2. Greece
3. Romania
4. Sweden
5. Hungary
6. Belarus
7. Netherlands
8. Ukraine
9. France
10. Italy
11. South Korea
12. Japan
13. Great Britain
14. Germany
15. United States
16. Russia
17. Canada
18. Poland
19.Turkey
20. China
Classic - reverse air rage on an Aeroflot flight as drunk cabin staff attack a passenger, giving him a black eye.
"... a medical examination after the flight showed the cabin attendants were heavily intoxicated.
Another passenger told a forum on the avia.ru civil aviation website that the stewards distributed in-flight meals only when the plane started its descent, and managed to spill large quantities of food on the floor. "
BBC: 'Reverse air-rage' on Russian jet
Blogjam is trying to get Blur's Damon Alburn to be the top entry for the word cunt (which if you are British or Irish or Australian, normally refers to a guy and can be used in general bar talk).
Cunt, or quoint used to be polite speak for Vagina (which sounds a hell of a lot more rude to me) and appears in Chaucer. The word 'quaint' is actually the same word via a different route.
Isn't Damon quaint?
Edison, the Man was made in 1940, in it, I have a recollection that a machine stops working because 'there is a bug in it'.
If that is true, this clearly predates the accepted origin when a moth appeared in the Mark I computer at Harvard in 1945.
Can anyone confirm?
The phrase 'what the dickens', has nothing to do with Dickens, but was ironically coined by Shakespeare hundreds of years earlier.
Trivia: Shakespeare top 10
Swiss bank account money scams are one of the rare delights of spam email, if only for the reason that somehow everyone involved seems to use a particularly obsequious form of convoluted Victorian English that is usually reserved for UK civil servants.
"It is of great importance that I would require your humble help in assisting me to claim a deposited consignment at swiszerland."
Swizerland - classic
Soft drink is purified tap water.
"Soft drink giant Coca-Cola has admitted it is selling purified tap water in a bottle. It says the source for its new Dasani bottled water is the mains supply at its factory in Kent."
At least snake oil sounds exotic.
Ah, Waldrobemalfunction.com - obviously a site about difficulties with IKEA's (un)dresser called Janet.
what do real kids think of classic guitar anthems - I am peeing myself...
"Bob Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone (1965)"
"What the grown-ups say: "Dylan drives his inspiration and imagination to even greater heights... Anger, hatred, disgust, defiance, disbelief, apathy, ignorance, repugnance; it's all here." (Earthsound)"
Kid: "Sophie: He sounds like he's just smelled something really bad, like cat poo."
"Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)"
"What the grown-ups say: "... reflects Kurt Cobain's skilful mingling of Stooges'-style brute yobbism (grinding guitars and yelping vocals), American punk and late 1970s art rock." (NME)"
Kid "Sophie It's making me think about doing bad things like putting snowballs down my sister's back. "
"The Sex Pistols: Anarchy In The UK (1977)"
"What the grown-ups say: "They play with an energy and conviction that is positively transcendent in its madness and fever... It has an Ahab-versus-Moby-Dick power that can shake you like no other music today can." (Rolling Stone)"
Kid "Beth: Who's Annie Key?"
etc.
Parrot's oratory stuns scientists:
"The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.
He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope"
"In olden days the nobility would ride on the left so their sword hand--usually the right hand, of course--would be on the same side as an oncoming horseman...Napoleon switched the convention in Europe from driving on the left to driving on the right for a simple reason--he was left-handed. This meant he mounted and dismounted his horse on the right-hand side, which he naturally preferred to be at the road edge."
New Scientist: The Last Word Science Questions and Answers
Why is Ben Affleck parking his car in Google's lot?
Hmm, it seems that Google has a limit on the size of words it will index - 128 characters. So mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm returns 30 results,
but one more m and nothing.
Hmmmmmm.
Two thirds of all the worlds Bengal tigers are thought to live in backyards and basements in the US.
BBC NEWS | Magazine | 10 things we didn't know this time last week
"There are fears that the growing demands of the construction industry could lead to a shortage in the desert kingdom."
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fimages%2Feditorial_images%2F2003-10%2Fplu03.jpg)
How was this photo fo a someone holding a nuclear fuel rod taken?
1. tiny, very brave photographer sitting inside containment chamber?
2. vanity mirror on other side of containment chamber?
3. deluxe double aspect containment chamber with windows on both sides?
4. fake containment chamber for publicity shots?
CNN.com - Oldest genital fossils found in Scotland - Sep. 22, 2003
The New York Times is a good newspaper - but the headlines are so dull that they border on parody. Today's priceless example: "No Anthrax found in pond".
Fark however, points to a cracking headline from the Australian News Interactive site: "Dalai Lama misses sex, shoots guns"
Sometimes tabloids are just much better fun.
The latest issue of AIR tackles the problem: is Kansas flatter than a pancake?.
"...For example, the earth is slightly flattened at the poles due to the earth's rotation, making its semi-major axis slightly longer than its semi-minor axis, giving a global f of 0.00335. For both Kansas and the pancake, we approximated the local ellipsoid with a second-order polynomial line fit to the cross-sections..."
"BERLIN (Reuters) - A giant catfish that ate a dog and terrorized a German lake for years has washed up dead".
So much better than a 'man bites dog' story.
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
The French language police have decided that people shouldn't use the word email but instead the term courriel, based on courrier electronique which they claim has common currency. Unless you check Google.fr of course.
So here's a thought - France has a lot to offer, without its language - it's famous for Food and drink and sex for gods sake - and the English (read American - this is not a patriotic rant) language accepts this: restaurant, beverage, embrace.
A siege mentality about the French language doesn't really preserve French culture at all, in fact if anything it prevents its appeal spreading - from the lack of a French originated point of view during the Iraq war (due to lack of english language transalations of French newspapers, most french opinion was propogated through anti-French, english speaking commentators) to the absence of decent cheese, manadatory kissing and high-speed railroads in the US.
So why not concede on the 'oh shit American English is becoming the Lingua Franca' and spread the amour instead. After all, even the word 'courriel' originates from North America, having been coined by a Canadian professor.
Recherche Google: "courrier electronique" 449,00 results.
Recherche Google: "e-mail" 2.6 million results. Email porduces 2.1 million.
James Dyson (inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner) has created a waterfall that creates the illusion of water following an endless spiral uphill.
BBC NEWS | UK | How does Dyson make water go uphill?
Condoms are usually used to prevent life:
Examiner: Condom was key to DNA discovery
Sometimes spam isn't so bad, e.g the pitch I just received to buy this talking toilet roll holder
Not being a fluent Swedish speaker, I could be wrong, but I sometimes wonder if Ikea product names are one big practical joke. Billy bookshelves, Lac or Dik wallhangings or a bedside table called Tracy
"Home-furnishing giant Ikea has apologized for accidentally naming a child's bunk bed after an obscene German expression.
The $175 bed is called the 'Gutvik' - which means 'good f- - -' in German. The company insists it was named after a tiny town in Sweden."
NYPOST.COM National News: WEIRD BUT TRUE
This week: The British and World Marbles Championship -- held at the Greyhound Inn at Tinsley Green, West Sussex
Next week: International worm charming championships at Totnes in Devon.
June: Toe-wrestling and snail racing.
August: Bog Snorkelling, Wane Rydd Bog at Llantrwyd Wells in mid-Wales.
Autumn: Competitive lie telling in Cumbria.
Eccentric Britain Gets Its Marbles Rolling
Walmart has taken action against an activist site that encouraged people to name their own prices for items by printing off fake barcodes and sticking them over originals.
"Re-code.com still provides a database of bar codes that can be copied and pasted into printing applications. It suggests, for instance, that users stick a label for Nerf balls over the bar code on a box of rifle ammunition."
Test your Systemizing Quotient (SQ)
If you get full marks you are a computer programmer, train spotter, have Aspergers syndrome or any of the above.
"The huge success that Mecca-Cola has enjoyed prompted Tawfik Mathlouthi, the Muslim businessman that launched the idea, to opt for creating a chain of fried chicken restaurants called Hallal Fried Chicken, or HFC."
Islam Online- News Section via Justine
Regarding the previous posting about the Washington Post OpEd, one could counter with 'the exception proves the rule' - wrong.
One of the historical meanings of the word 'prove', which is no longer in currency, was 'test'. So the expression more properly reads 'the exception which tests the rule'.
An exception puts a rule to test, it does not and cannot prove it in any way.
"It weighs 150kg (330lb) but when they are fully-grown, they are bigger than a double decker bus."
CBBC Newsround | ANIMALS | Colossal squid with 'parrot's beak' caught
"A Japanese toymaker claims to have developed a gadget that translates dog barks into human language."
The version that transalates human speech into something that dogs can understand will take 30 years.
Currently in the Daypop Top 40: www.yournotme.com, shouldn't this be www.yourenotme.com?
Today is 03, 03, 03, I was alseep at three minutes past three this morning.
At 12:34 on the 5th June 1978, I was in a Maths class at St. Johns School in Northwood, Middx. (12345678 - the day precedes the month, military style, in European date nomenclature). It was a hot day and the windows were open and the smell of newly mown grass wafted in from the playing fields. The maths teacher stopped the lesson and told us to remember the date and where we were - I did.
I've always thought that the disclaimer:
"the personal opinions expressed here are mine not my employers" was tautological.
For a weblog, this equates to:
"the personal opinions on this personal opinion site are personal opinions not someone else's opinions".
I may add that to my sidebar.
Although more accurately it should read:
"the personal opinions on this personal opinions site are rarely my personal opinion but more usually the result of a deeply immature desire to disagree with anything anyone says"
Meg elaborates:
A personal opinion - megnut.com
Danger, do not visit the link at the bottom of this posting if you are as boring as I am, it will consume unhealthy amounts of time.
The site graphically shows the popularity of various numbers on the web, their rank and significance.
404 is the 101st most popular number of 100,000 and is associated with the Peugeot 404 in addition to the standard http 'not found' error message.
Yours sincerely
Cliff Claven
"Among the highlights are commentated explanations of penguin procreation - along the lines of "Mr and Mrs Penguin then get it on together" - and an indiscreet peek at the zoo's elephant "members," according to Chan."
I've heard they even have some educated fleas.
NEWS.com.au | Zoo offers Valentine's sex tours (February 15, 2003)
This is kind of like the paradox of the library catalogue that doesn't contain a reference to itself. Is the trademark 'tm' symbol trademarked, I wonder?
Word Mark CREATIVE COMMONS
Goods and Services IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Providing non-downloadable softwarefor use by artists and other authors of creative works to producedocuments and "metadata" regarding the terms of dissemination of theirworks; providing information regarding the dissemination of creativeworks
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Filing Date March 11, 2002
Filed ITU FILED AS ITU
Owner (APPLICANT) Creative Commons Corporation CORPORATION MASSACHUSETTSc/o Berkman Center for Internet & Society 1587 Massachusetts Avenue,B205 Cambridge MASSACHUSETTS 02139
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE Serial Number 76381094
trademark search registration obtain trade mark
Q. So what should we really be playing instead of 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon?
A. Six degrees of the recently deceased Rod Steiger.
In fact Kevin Bacon doesn't even make the top 10:
1. Rod Steiger
2. Donald Pleasence
3. Martin Sheen
4. Christopher Lee
5. Robert Mitchum
6. Charlton Heston
7. Eddie Albert
8. Robert Vaughn
9. Donald Sutherland
10. John Gielgood
Via Kottke.org: vote for the New 7 Wonders
My Picks:
1. Manhattan
Ancient pyramids, Colossus of Rhodes, pah! The collective architecture of Manhattan is mankind's greatest achievement so far. Van Allen's Chrysler building, its crowning glory.
2. Downtown Chicago
OK, for the purists there are some better individual buildings here, but collectively Manhattan still wins.
3. Tivo
God's machine and all. I love Tivo, it changes everything (I haven't actually bought one yet, but I don't care, Tivo rules).
4. Ebay
Whenever you are getting bored of the web, there is always something weird on Ebay to cheer you up. See Whowouldbuythat.
5. Long Haul Jet travel
When Norman Foster was asked to pick his favorite piece of modern architecture, he chose the Boeing 747. Nothing changed the world more than the availability of cheap long-haul travel that the 747 created.
6. Cellphones
The Internet may be cool but if you had shown me one of today's cellphone's 20 years ago I would have wet myself with excitement.
7. Velcro
No matter how hard you look and how slowly you put Velcro hooks and cloth together, it is impossible to believe this stuff actually works.
"A German family has kept a live eel in its bathtub for the last 33 years and even trained it to swim into a bucket when someone needs to wash. "
CNN.com - Family keeps pet eel in bath, for 33 years - Jan. 7, 2003
Jason notes that Amazon customers who wear clothes also shop for clean underwear and wonders what naked customers shop for: kottke.org :: Nudist in aisle 6. Well according to Dealtime, they like leather bikers' jackets, it must be that second skin thing.
I can never get bored of Googlism:
Q. Where is God?
A. God is living in japan
Q. Where is the Devil?
A. Devil is abroad in zagreb
Q. Where is Elvis
A. Elvis is alive and doing my laundry
Q. What is the meaning of life?
A. The meaning of life is the fusion and tension of spar
OR: (I like this one) the meaning of life is to understand the meaning of life
Q. Who is the fairest of them all?
A. Is the fairest of them all is beyond me
Q. What is the square root of 2?
A. Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about is the square root of 2 yet.
Q. What is sex?
A. Sex is for combating parasites
Q. Where is my wallet?
A. is my walletis mine? servo
Q. What is the capital of Peru
A. Is the capital of peru is realized by an arrangement of neurones
and my favorite...
Q. What is reality?
A. Reality is a robotic fish tank driven by siamese
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmembers.aol.com%2Fjohnbell78%2FGum.jpg)
Is it just me? Whenever anyone mentions the word Singapore - some know-it-all (usually a know-it-all like myself) drones "do you know that chewing gum is illegal in Singapore?"
Well apparently it's true - at least until today, when it will no longer be a criminal offence and will be sold on prescription.
Ananova - Singapore relaxes chewing gum ban
So now that the traditional Singapore chewing gum anecdote is history here's an alternative gum trivium:
"the ancient Greeks were known to be fond of a gummy substance named mastiche, derived from the resin of the mastic tree. In fact, Dioscorides, a Greek physician and medical botanist of the First Century, refers to the "curative powers" of the mastic in his writing."
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
"Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
It's possible to lead a cow upstairs, but not downstairs.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.galeton.com%2Fpix%2F9540_websm.jpg)
Q: Why do sounds like scratching a blackboard and scraping metal make some people cringe or shiver?
A: The danger warning sounds emitted by some of the great apes are of a similar frequency and tone to the sound made by fingernails dragged on a blackboard, so possibly a primal instinct for danger is being stimulated.
New Scientist: Questions and Answers
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