Nagarjuna

Genuine Panama hats are made in Equador, not Panama.

Almost as good as the Swedish guy arrested this week for building a homemade fission reactor in his kitchen and procuring uranium to fuel it! He phoned the police on Wednesday to check what he doing was legal - it wasn't - he was arrested forthwith. Brilliant! http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/08/man-arrested-attempting-split-atom-kitchen.php Oh, just saw BazingaGirl got there first :-( Anyway - its a very Sheldonesque thing to do right?

@ 4ofN... So we're agreed then - the statement "autotrophs began to drool" is wholly factually inaccurate even given the context. 'Things that drool' did indeed EVOLVE from autotrophs, but at no point in evolutionary history did autotrophs BEGIN drooling. They played fast and loose with the facts/wording to come up with catchy lines for a song. It bugs me because I'm a pedant. The fact that it bugs me, bugs you. Glad we got that straight! ps. don't get me started on the wall bit! The song is supposedly chronological, yet apparently, man built the wall before construction started on the Pyramids. Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt? 27th Century BC. Pirámide Mayor in Peru? Approx 3000 BC. Earliest incarnation of what is now known as the Great Wall? 5th century BC tops. pps. And yes, that bugs me too! I'm guessing the fact it bugs me will bug you too?

Dr. Jones' classroom at 12min 30sec into of Raiders of the Lost Ark & 13min 50sec into Last Crusade, is the actual classroom where a certain Dr. Brownelea taught me GCSE & A Level Chemistry. Pretty much all of the shots at his "university" were shot on location at the Mill Hill School in North London. Its always weird watching Indiana Jones films - one minute he's fighting lions and dodging Nazis in exotic locations - the next minute he's wandering around the halls and grounds of my old school down the road.

"This bounty hunter is my kind of scum. Netmouse must be allowed to speak" ('Huttese' - the language of the Hutts is the Star Wars galaxy - cobbled together from lines Jabba & Bib Fortuna speak in Jedi)

Lol - the title of the thread reminds me of Douglas Coupland's "Microsurfs". At one point, one of the characters decides to "flatland", locks himself in his room and will only accept "two dimensional food" that can be slid under his bedroom door.

The original UK single release of Blue Monday had a special die-cut custom sleeve with a slot cut into it so the record & sleeve together looked like a floppy disk. It was only on sale in that format for about a fortnight as they miscalculated the cost of producing the sleeve and were losing about £0.32 on every single sold. As such, its now pretty rare and HIGHLY collectible - a housemate at uni inherited a copy from his dad - a very cool piece of vinyl. ps. Factory Records officially refuted this story to save face but I know for a fact its true. Another friend's dad worked as a financial officer for independent record labels at the time and confirmed the story.

Kasu ya lee coy rah doe kankee kung! Netmouse mus spee ek oh een :-)

The lingua franca of ancient Rome wasn't Latin - the demos predominantly spoke a dialect of ancient Greek. Perversely, the literal meaning of democracy is "mob rule".

Ricotta - not a true cheese ;-) It's a pseudo-cheese made from the whey left over after the curds are separated to make the proper cheese. The casein and most of the fat is coagulated to make big rich rounds of hard cheese from the guts of the milk - the whey is re-processed to harvest the remaining albumin and globulin and rounds ricotta of are made from the leavings. Traditionally the farmer would mature and sell the hard cheese from his milk and use the ricotta to feed his family and workers. Its actually pretty good for you - quite low-fat but full of natural whey proteins - Ricotta - nature's protein shake!

I've always found it amazing that Malta has a higher population than Iceland despite Iceland, geographically, being thousands of times larger. From memory I think Malta has a population of around 418,000 people on an island of a mere 312 square km! (the European microstates are a great source of random trivia!)

The highest peak in Nevada is not the highest point of elevation in Nevada. The summit of Boundary Peak is, in reality, the highest point of elevation in the state of Nevada - but as its topographic prominence is less than 300m, it is classified a mere sub-peak of Montgomery Peak (which is in California). Due to this quirky topographical prominence issue - the highest classified peak in Nevada is the lower Wheeler Peak. I only just saw this and it tickled me something rotten - propz!

That line is all about evolution. Given the time-line of the song, autotrophs do morph into animals capable of drooling (us). I have to disagree! While simple heterotrophs did evolve from autotrophs.; Autotrophs didn't (even remotely directly) evolve into things that drool (ie. an organism with a mouth a salivary glands). Autotrophs evolved into simple heterotrophs which in turn evolved into more complex heterotrophs that eventually evolved into things that drool. "Autotrophs began to drool" implies a drooling autotroph evolved from a non-drooling autoptoph. Saying "autotrophs began to drool" is akin to saying "Australopithecines began using computers" as species of the genus Homo (including Homo Sapiens Sapiens, which began using computers in the 20th century) are believed to have evolved from a species of the genus Australopithecus.

Dogs don't see in just black and white - they have dichromatic vision, seeing the world in shades of red and blue. Their visual spectrum is closer to red/green colorblindness in humans than it is to true black/white monochromatism. The gull fact sounds pretty spurious too! ps. my dog goes nuts whenever I drive past green spaces when he's in the car - pretty weird considering he can't perceive the colour green :-)

Um, the Cuba Libre fact is a nice story but that's all it is. Coca Cola wasn't available in Cuba at the time the event occurred. From memory, the first shipment of coke arrived in cuba 1-2 years after the supposed date of the story. The story was popularized by Bacardi's marketing department as it added a bit of romance and history to the cocktail their blue ribband spirit is most commonly used in. ps. I didn't just google that BTW - I just have a passing interest in cocktails and their origin, allied to a freakish memory for trivia ;-)