good one mr. perot! that's interesting about the camera. those pros are constantly fiddling with lights and stuff they don't need the extra frustration of "where's that reflection coming from"!! i've selected an alexandrite out of the amulet catalog. it's simulated but the whole thing is still gonna cost $600 (setting and all). may have to wait for a good raise!

Oooh...if it is like my "Mexican Alexandrite" (not the real one I wear all the time!) it will be beautiful and you will love it!

Northern General Ulysses S. Grant owned slaves who were not freed until after the Civil War had ended. Timekeepers have clocked the action in a 60 minute football game to actually be around 14 minutes. Leon Uris dropped out of high school to join the US Marines. In 1978, a college professor conducted a study of fingernail biting. His findings also revealed approximately 15% of Americans admitted to also chewing their toenails. Pigs can run a 7.5 minute mile.

A typical American hospital has three to four times more employees than patients. Your skin is about 3/16th of an inch thick. Did you know the federal withholding tax taken out of each American's paycheck was enacted as part of a "temporary" wartime measure? Talk about fuzzy math. The Hawaiian alphabet has only twelve letters. Sioux Indian Chief Crazy Horse was called "Curly" as a child. .

Honey is used as a center for golf balls and in antifreeze mixtures. There are 6 Internet Service Providers serving Iceland. The Library of Congress has 530 miles of shelves. Jerry Rice is one of the NFL's best-conditioned players. Several people, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy, were killed when the ten-ton "Peacemaker" gun exploded during a firing from the first propeller-driven warship, the U.S.S. Princeton. They were on a cruise on the Potomac south of Washington, D.C., in 1844. President John Tyler was also on board with his fiance, Julia Gardiner -- they were unhurt as they were in a cabin below deck. IBM had 2,000 employees along with 4,000 volunteers working in shifts round the clock at the Sydney Olympics. On Thursday, October 5, 2000, the space shuttle program was to launch its 100th shuttle. Shuttles have orbited the Earth about 13,500 times, travelling 350,000,000 miles -- equal to going to the sun and back twice. Big tobacco has played another trick on the public, according to a paper published in the latest issue of the journal Tobacco Control. Instead of finding ways to reduce levels of harmful secondhand smoke, manufacturers chose to hide it, adding chemicals to their cigarettes that mask the smoke's odor and visibility. What's worse, those additives may actually make ETS more dangerous. http://www.sciam.com/news/091200/2.html The salamander is the official South Carolina state amphibian.

i'm depressed about the pigs being able to run faster than me *frown*

honey is in the middle of golf balls? hmmmm, bet it's not edible!

It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. Top 4 Favorite Theme Parks: 1. Busch Gardens Williamsburg, (Williamsburg, VA) 2. Disneyland, (Anaheim, CA) 3. Cedar Point, (Sandusky, OH) 4. Paramount's Kings Island, (Kings Island, OH) 5 years after being one of the judges who condemned 19 people of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, Samuel Sewall stated the convictions were a mistake. If you pause Saturday Night Fever at the "How Deep Is Your Love" rehearsal scene, you will see the camera crew in the dance hall mirror. 6% of Americans proposed over the phone. America spends 14% of its GNP on healthcare: $1,000,000,000

Precipitation What is hail and is it dangerous? Are raindrops really tear-shaped? Big and small snowflakes Can snow be coloured? Sounds of snow Which day is the snowiest? The sound of hail What do you call it when snow evaporates before hitting the ground? I would like to know when it is too warm to snow? What determines whether precipitation will fall as freezing rain or snow? What is the Bergeron Process? Why are all snow flakes six sided? What is hail and is it dangerous? David Bowes, a Grade 11 student in Chatham, New Brunswick was curious about the formation of hail and how dangerous it is. While hurricanes, tornadoes and lightning grab all the headlines, hail is one of the most dangerous and certainly most destructive of all severe weather phenomena. Each year it injures a few Canadians, kills thousands of farm animals, wildlife and birds and causes millions of dollars damage. Now I don't know whether hail has ever killed anyone in Canada. It has killed hundreds in India and in China. And in the United States, at least 3 people have been killed by falling hailstones including a 3-month old boy, and it caused a single-engine plane to crash. For a hailstone to grow, it must be captured or held up by powerful thunderclouds while new layers of ice are continuously being added. In most cases, frozen raindrops or ice balls are caught up in a kind of atmospheric trampoline as they fall from clouds. The ice particles are thrown back up into freezing air by strong updrafts where they acquire another layer of ice. These updrafts can continue to bounce the growing ice pieces back and forth - sometimes 25 times or more. Eventually the hailstones grow too heavy to be supported by the thunderstorm's updraft and fall to the ground as hailstones - the size of peas or as big as grapefruits or even bigger. top Are raindrops really tear-shaped? Adam Taub of Thornhill, Ontario wonders whether raindrops are really tear or pear-shaped like you see on cartoons, advertisements and posters. High-speed photographs of most raindrops nearing the earth show them to be more like mushroom tops or hamburger buns - not at all tear-shaped. The falling speed of raindrops is directly related to their size. Small drops, those less than 2 mm in diameter, tend to remain round as they fall. The surface tension is sufficient to hold it together as a nearly perfect sphere. Larger raindrops fall at a speed around 30 km/h. Because the air pressure or resistance is greatest on the bottom, the drop flattens there which makes the droplet bulge on top. The side edges bulge out because air pressure there is lower. So the large raindrops tend to be flat on the bottom, round on top and wider than they are high just like a hamburger bun. Really large drops, those say 6 mm or more across, become distorted into a shape rather like a parachute and then they break up into smaller drops. top Big and small snowflakes Peggy Power of North York asks why are snowflakes quite big on certain days, and then smaller on other days? The shape and size of snowflakes ultimately depend on the temperature and the amount of water vapour available in the cloud where the flake first forms, and in the layers of air that the flake falls through as it descends. Some soggy flakes, measuring about 2 cm in diameter when they reach the earth, are conglomerations of 100's of matted-together flakes which have passed through relatively mild and moist air. On the other hand, dry snow tends to arrive as small, single flakes, unlikely to bind with other flakes as they fall through dry, cold air. Nearly anything can happen to a snowflake as it drifts and tumbles earthward. Pieces break off, evaporate or melt. They bump into each other and sometimes bind together. If the wind is too strong, the big flakes will rip apart and you'll only see fragments. Also the greater the distance a snowflake falls the larger it usually becomes. About a century ago, monster snowflakes which were larger than a medium-size pizza supposedly fell from the skies over Montana. top Can snow be coloured? Mr. Eloi DeGrace of Dartmouth sent me a clipping from a newspaper in 1819 citing a peculiar find of red snow. How can that be? In 1818, Sir John Ross, the noted Arctic explorer discovered large deposits of red-coloured snow in Greenland. It was found to contain red-tinted, microscopic plants and animals. Pure snow is white, but snow is never pure. It contains much more than just frozen moisture and air. Pollen, single-celled organisms, specks of dust, dirt, sand, and ash and traces of pollution are sometimes in sufficient quantities to affect the colour. The foreign material is carried by wind currents before the snowflake begins to fall. Yellow snow (it's not what you think) can be coloured by pollen from a near-by pine forest fell in Pennsylvania; pink snow has fallen on Vancouver Island; pale-blue snow fell in the French Alps presumably coloured by copper salts in the dust from the Sahara desert. During the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, black and brown soils from Oklahoma and Texas coloured snow in Eastern Canada. Snow can also change colour after it falls. Colonies made up of algae, fungi and bacteria living among the crystals feed on the nutrients in the snow. top Sounds of snow Clayton Trought of Aurora Ontario asks why does snow squeak when you walk on it. I am sure you have noticed that the colder the temperature, the fluffier the snow and the squeakier the sound it makes when you walk on it. One explanation is that when the air and snow are only slightly below freezing, pressure from walking compresses and partially melts the snow crystals underfoot. Now, lubricated by a thin film of water, the snow can flow and little sound is made. But on cold days, when the temperature is, say -15C or lower, foot pressure is not sufficient to melt the snow. Instead, when you step down, the individual cold ice crystals move abruptly, slipping and crashing into each other. The sudden rubbing or smashing produces that familiar cold-weather creaking sound. Because the sound produced by snow is related to how cold it is, you can use it to tell the temperature. The louder the snow cries the colder the temperature of both the air and snow. Another possible explanation is that the pressure of stepping on the air-filled snowflakes rapidly expels the air and produces the characteristic squeak or crunchy noise we know so well. top

Did you hear about the big meteorite that fell in Northern British Columbia, it was on NPR this morning. To quote http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=10/13/2000&PrgID=3 -- NPR's Richard Knox reports on clues to the earth's formation that are falling from the sky. Last January, a real estate agent in Canada witnessed the crash of a meteorite he described as a gigantic white light from the sky. A week later an amateur scientist discovered pieces of the meteorite, collected and preserved them in the freezer. Scientists now say it's the best sample they have yet to study how the earth was formed. (4:51)

And more details at http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/20001012/sp_meteorite.html

Cross posted from Springark Thursday October 12 4:41 PM ET Scientists Find Completely New Animal in Greenland http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001012/sc/life_animal_dc_1.html COPENHAGEN, Denmark (Reuters) - Danish scientists have found a completely new kind of animal down a cold well in Greenland and are keeping a colony of them in a fridge, the Arctic magazine Polarfronten reported on the Internet Thursday. The 0.1-millimeter long freshwater organism does not fit into any one of the previously known animal families -- making it only the fourth such creature to be discovered on the planet in the past 100 years, Polarfronten said. Studies of the animal named ``Limnognathia maerski'' show that it shares some characteristics with certain seawater life-forms. Scientists from Copenhagen University and Aarhus University in Denmark have established a new phylum -- or family -- for the tiny animal, whose most remarkable feature is a set of very complicated jaws. It has now got its own branch, Micrognathozoa, on the tree of the world's known animals, which are divided into slightly more than 30 families, Polarfronten said. Limnognathia maerski, which reproduces through parthenogenesis, uses its jaws to scrape the bacteria and algae it feeds on from underwater moss growing in icy wells which freeze over during the long Arctic winter. The animal was found in samples taken in 1994 from a well in Isunngua on Disco island in northwestern Greenland. A colony of the tiny creatures, all females, is in a refrigerator at Copenhagen University. Greenland, the world's largest island, is part of Denmark.

Positively amazing, but boring...nothing male around at all??!

Trick or Treating under the Stars Thursday's Classroom for Friday, Oct. 13th http://www.thursdaysclassroom.com In little more than two weeks, millions of kids will be outdoors after nightfall on Halloween. Don't let your students go Trick or Treating unprepared -- a basic knowledge of the northern autumn sky will make Halloween more fun than ever. This week's activities include: o Draco-Lanterns -- transform traditional pumpkin carving into a truly stellar experience! o Toothpaste Constellations -- Do you have trouble convincing your kids to brush their teeth? Now you can put all that neglected toothpaste to good use in this constellation art project. o What's Your Angle? -- Students learn about triangles and quadrilaterals as they grow familiar with the autumn constellations. o Hands Up! -- One of the most useful tools for navigating the night sky (and learning the basics of angles and degrees) is right by your side. o The Crazy Constellations Coloring Book -- Students can color original art by Duane Hilton as they follow along with this week's lessons. ...and more! Please visit http://www.thursdaysclassroom.com

WHAT WAS THE FIRST ZOO IN THE UNITED STATES? It was the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens, which opened in 1874. In 1938, it became the site of the first children's zoo. Founded and operated by the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Zoo currently houses more than 1,400 specimens of over 400 species. WHAT IS SILLY PUTTY MADE OF? The rubberlike compound is composed, in part, of boric acid and silicone oil. Invented at the General Electric laboratories in the 1940s as an inexpensive synthetic rubber for use during World War II, it gained its greatest popularity when New Haven, Connecticut, store owner Paul Hodgson bought a large quantity of it, put it in small plastic eggs, and called it Silly Putty.

note that there is a new topic in springark for those newly discovered critters. that meteorite was way cool!

Yeah, I need a piece of a meteorite for my collection. Even a wee little one no one will miss...oh, and a moon rock would be nice. Shoulda made off with the one I guarded that time... Parthenogenic Critters on SpringArk...gonna check!

The largest crocodiles ever were Deinosuchus, from the late Cretaceous era. They were up to 50 feet long. One skull that was found was almost six feet long. If IBM's Q7 failed, it would run a diagnostic, telling you what rack of tubes to pull and what tube to replace in the rack. Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York was founded in 1861 by a brewer named Matthew Vassar. The Oakland Bay Bridge was completed 6 months ahead of schedule and millions under budget and is considered one of the 7 wonders of the modern world. The total weight of all insects Earth, is 12 times greater than the weight of all people. The height of the Eiffel Tower varies as much as six inches depending on the temperature. It took engineers 22 years to design the zipper. Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone. The US has the world's most violent weather. Each year it experiences 10,000 violent thunderstorms, 5,000 floods, 1,000 tornadoes and several hurricanes.

Benjamin Franklin was the 15th child of a Boston soapmaker. A dragonfly eats, on average, 300 mosquitos per day. An inch-thick rope of spider's silk can withstand up to 140,000 pounds of pressure. In 1968, there were 5 million-dollar lottery winners who did not claim their prize. A horse can look forward with one eye and backwards with the other.

Frogs never drink -- they absorb water through their skin. The book that Neo hides his money and software disks in is a copy of "Simulacra and Simulation" by the Jean Baudrillard. The book argues Baudrillard's thesis of "hyperreality": the idea that multiple copies annihilate the ancient relationship between copy and original... The British government has sanctioned insurance companies' use of genetic tests for inherited diseases. http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns999968 When North America was first settled, beavers grew to the size of bears. Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards. Worldwide, about 40 square miles of land are transformed into desert each day. Rhode Island was the last of the original thirteen colonies to become a state.

A Matter of Time A Mind-Warping Memo to Kick-Start Your Brain on a Marvelous Monday Morning "The time of physics is defined and measured by a pendulum, whether it is the pendulum of a grandfather's clock, the pendulum of the Earth's rotation around the sun, or the pendulum of the precessing electron in the nuclear magnetic field of the hydrogen maser. Time, therefore, is defined by periodic rotation - that is, by motion related to a point moving uniformly around a circle." These are the words of physicist Edgar Lipworth, as reported by the occasionally apocryphal but invariably colorful Tom Robbins in his book, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Apocryphal or no, Lipworth's assertion found a warm corner in my mind where it circled, laid down and then napped for awhile. Upon waking, the strange thought yawned, stretched its arms and said, "All movement happens in Space; height, width and depth - the first three dimensions. And as you already know, the fourth dimension is Time. Light moves through space and according to Einstein, Time stands still at the speed of light. Light, my friend, is the pendulum of the universe, marking and measuring time. And just as faith is the evidence of things not seen, color is the evidence of light. Color is the momentary, visible bridge between space and time." Scratching my head, I asked, "Are you sure?" For a long time there was nothing but silence in my mind. Then, just as the thought was vanishing over the horizon, it called over it's shoulder, "Let there be light. Remember?" And then it was gone. But I had other thoughts to replace it on the playground of my brain. Here's one of the more interesting ones for you to ponder - "Time is the mirror in which our choices are seen. And it is through our choices that our values and beliefs are revealed... If you want to know what a person believes, you need only to watch what they do." But the only useful, practical, valuable thought among all these, my most recent thoughts, is found in the answer to the following Question: "If objective, fourth-dimensional reality is this meeting place that we call the space-time continuum, (composed of height, width, depth and time,) then what would a three-dimensional reality be?" Ah, but the answer to that question is an illuminating and profitable one, indeed. I'll share it with you in next week's memo. Roy H. Williams MMMemo@wizardofads.com

England is smaller than New England. Some teenagers are now fearing technological obsolescence because their younger brothers and sisters know more about computers than they do. Robots in Japan pay union dues. During the Vietnam War, more people were killed in the US by guns and explosives than US soldiers in the war zone. - Deane Jordan 100 years ago, there were about 230 murders per year in the US. In 1769, Nicholas Cugnot, a French military engineer, built the first self-propelled car. Designed to pull artillery, the three-wheeled vehicle could travel about 2.5 miles per hour while carrying a cannon and four people. Most fish don't really sleep but rather go through a period of decreased activity that allows their body to regenerate. On the other hand, many coral reef fish do sleep and when they do they sleep by standing on their tails or leaning on a rock!

How does a bird find a worm in the ground? Before the sun rises and warms up the earth's surface, earthworms usually crawl up to the earth's surface while it is still cool and damp with the morning dew. That's also the time they fall prey to the "early" (and hungry) birds. When a bird stands on the ground near a worm which is crawiling underneath, the bird can feel the earth's vibrations with its feet. The bird can also hear the worm tunneling in the earth below with their ears.

I heard a good piece on NPR this morning, a reporter carries video equipment and tapes his journey though a previously untravled part of the African interior. The animal and insect sounds nearly drown out this late night narrative. Worth catching!

So Japanese robots pay union dues. That's very funny. How exactly do they work out the accounting in regard to this? Your son's fiancee as thus far passed two trials, meeting you and facing the volcano. Aren't there usally three trials? What's the third going to be? Tomorrow comes before yesterday in the dictionary. It's a good think you ducked because I was ready to use a virtual yo-yo as a weapon. It's just as well I didn't since I'm mostly a menace to myself when using a yo-yo. No cracks about my being a yo-yo, please. Basically I refer to myself as quirky. I know that someone here will figure out this riddle, probably Marcia. So here goes: It's the beginning of enternity, the end of time, and found in space.

My son's fiancee did the third trial first..fell in love with my son and managed to make it reciprocal while winning over his friends' affections. Even the House male likes her! About those robots...amazing opening for graft, huh! Yo-yos tend to attack those whose ineptitude they sense. I have had my share of bruises, thank you... ...the letter "E" Wish we could get NPR radio on this side of the island....

There are over 7,000 PCs and 2,000 touch-screens and 540 servers at the Sydney Olympics. By 1880, Standard Oil refined 95% of the oil in the U.S. The number of people accessing the Internet in China is now the same as the number of people in France: 7,200,000. Rugby, North Dakota is the geographical center of North America. It's marked by a 15 foot rock obelisk and flanked by poles flying the U.S. and Canadian flags. The first cook book was written by the Greeks in 400 B.C. Henry Ford went broke five times before succeeding. Autumn leaves actually do not turn color. They lose one color, green, and show other colors they've had all along. The change is also caused more by the shortening of the days than by cooler weather. - Deane Jordan, "1001 Facts Somebody Screwed Up"

Saying 'goodbye' for the next 5 months ...off to Timbuctoo (well, near it anyway ...same country). Look for Marcia posting in Cultures and travel for me. See you all in March unless I get to an internet cafe or something ... Maggie

take care maggie!

God Speed Maggie, luv! +----------------- Bizarre Superstitions ------------------+ Spilling salt is considered bad luck, probably because it was once so valuable. Superstition has it a person is doomed to shed as many tears as it takes to dissolve the spilled salt. Evil spirits can't harm you when you stand inside a circle. Suspend a wedding band over the palm of the pregnant girl. If the ring swings in a circular motion it will be a girl. If the ring swings in a straight line the baby will be a boy. A knife as a gift from a lover means that the love will soon end. [Especially if the knife is delivered to your back.] If you use the same pencil to take a test that you used for studying for the test, the pencil will remember the answers. The number of Xs in the palm of your right hand is the number of children you will have. You must hold your breath while going past a cemetery or you will breathe in the spirit of someone who has recently died.

My right palm has one X and I have one child.

Weekend Meteors NASA Science News for October 18, 2000 On Friday the 13th of October a brilliant fireball startled stargazers in Texas and Kansas. But that was just a piece of space junk -- a real meteor shower arrives this weekend. FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast18oct_1.htm?list89800 ---

i have 2 x's that i can really see and i have two kids!

How weird! How does that matter, and is it only a female manifestation?

i have heard that when palm readings are taken, one should read the weaker hand. it seems that the dominate hand changes due to use. i wonder about guy's hands.

yup, but certain things apparently only show up on dominant hand. Check how many grandchildren you're gonna have!!!

checked house male - he has only one X...and two natural children...

how do i do that?

I just asked a young teenage lady and she found 6 Xs on her hand! Not in HER future, she says. She said probably have two - the first one and quintuplets for the second one! Her mother has 2 Xs and 2 children...

the AM has none.......wait, i got it on the grandchildren! took me a minute!

she has three x's

Huh!!! You'll have at least 3 then...*grin* Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. IBM's Q7 could play video and text games and track 400 airplanes simultaneously. 29% of Americans can not drive a stick-shift car. Microsoft was the worst performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average this year (2000). By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds. Poverty -- not cancer, not AIDS, not heart disease -- is the number one killer in the world. P.T. Barnum never said "There's a sucker born every minute". The shrimp's heart is in its head. America media mogul Ted Turner owns 1.5% of New Mexico.

Q. Why do we read from left to right? A. The ancient Greeks started out writing from right to left, as many present day languages still do. They then adopted a style known as "boustrophedon" a reference to turning the way an ox turns a plow. This super efficient style went from left to right and right to left on alternate lines, saving the eyeballs the trip back to the right side to start a new line. Around 500 BC, the Greeks began to write exclusively from left to right. The reasons for the change are uncertain, but may have to do with a new split reed pen that was easier to move in that direction.

Examples of different types of energy: 1. Kinetic energy - falling water from a dam or wind. 2. Heat energy - anything burning. 3. Electrical energy - obtained from an electric current. 4. Potential energy - energy locked up in coal, oil, gas, food, and wood. 5. Mechanical energy - a wheel turned by falling water. 6. Solar energy - heat from the sun. 7. Gravitational energy - from anything falling. 8. Atomic/nuclear energy - from splitting an atom.

What makes a cat purr? A cat has two sets of vocal cords when born. One set, contained in a cat's voice box, makes the "meow" sound. The other set, which are actually false vocal cords, are vibrated upon inhaling and exhaling, which produces an involuntary continuous purring sound.

Have a safe journey and an enjoyable visit, Maggie.

Marcia, I'm sorry it took so long to get back. You are absolutely right, the letter "E" is the beginning of enternity, the end of time, and found in space. I knew you'd get it. I'm glad to learn that your son's fiancee passed all three of her tests. The house male approves as well. How about the little fur-person, the marmalade princess? Speaking of kitties, they can purr and eat at the same time. I always wondered how they did that. Thank you for explaining how they generate that sound. There's always something to learn at Geo.

When my Master Programmer handed me Geo and told me I was to create the first topic, I thought I had chosen a totally useless topic; one so inspecific that nothing would fit in here. I have found it most versatile of late. After all, we ARE all things of Planet Earth! Miss Kitty, the marmalade princess is skittish of everyone but the male of the species. If I come bearing edibles then she will tolerate me and fling herself tummy-up on my shoes to be petted. Otherise, she just tolerates the rest of us but catches rats almost 1/2 her size and presents them to us. Yak!! Good Kitty!

He who blindly quotes what he reads must at times admit he is an fool. CORRECTION: Microsoft could not be the worst performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, because it is listed on Nasdaq. Thanks, Richmond. ************************************************************* At age 16 Confucius was a corn inspector. 1,500,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of unique information are generated each year, the equivalent of 250 books worth for every man, woman and child on the planet. Of these 1.5 Exabytes of information, 93% of it stored digitally. http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info/ The average car produces 4 times its weight in exhaust gases over the life of the car. Cleveland, Ohio got the first traffic light on Aug. 5, 1914. Jerry Rice is a 10-time ALL-PRO (1986-90, 92-96). The garden equipment maker Wolf-Garten has built a prototype machine fitted with an array of four lasers that cuts grass to an accuracy of 1/25th of an inch. Powerful lasers evaporate water from the grass and chop the dried residue into tiny particles. A stream of air then blends the cuttings with fertiliser before depositing the mixture onto the lawn. The mower also includes mobile Internet access and a CD player to entertain you as you cut the lawn. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns226055 Horses were originally used to pull railway cars. 80% of your body temperature escapes through your head. Polar bears can smell a person up to 20 miles away.

+--------------- Bizarre Historical Trivia ----------------+ 100 years ago.... Only 14 percent of the homes in the United States had a bathtub. There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved roads. Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the twenty-first most populous state in the Union. The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower. The average wage in the U.S. was twenty-two cents an hour. The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound. Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Drive-by-shootings - in which teenage boys galloped down the street on horses and started randomly shooting at houses, carriages, or anything else that caught their fancy - were an ongoing problem in Denver and other cities in the West. Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet. Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented. Some medical authorities warned that professional seam- stresses were apt to become sexually aroused by the steady rhythm of the sewing machine's foot pedals. They recommended slipping bromide - which was thought to diminish sexual desire - into the woman's drinking water. Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health." Coca-Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine. There were about 230 reported murders in the U.S. annually.

Queen Victoria used cocaine. It was an ingredient in an elixer she took for "women's complaints". There is also an ad for Bayer aspirin from the 1890's which states, "Bayer aspirin with herion. Strong pain relief." Last but not least, there was Coca-Cola which originally did have a small amount of cocaine in it.

Ah, yes... No wonder they called them "The Good Old Days" Laudinum is what was prescribed for almosty anything which ailed a woman. It was tincture of opium, and it probably kept them from complaining much!

In the Arctic, the sun sometimes appears to be square. An ordinary light bulb converts only 10% of the inputted electricity as light. The rest is dissipated as heat. Seven nuclear submarines lie on the ocean floor: five are Russian, two American. In addition, dozens of obsolete Soviet submarines are rusting in just a few feet of water in various Russian ports. http://www.sciam.com/2000/1100issue/1100scicit2.html The first envelopes with gummed flaps were produced in 1844. In Britain they were not immediately popular because it was thought to be a serious insult to send a person's saliva to someone else. Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his hat to keep his head cool. He changed it every two innings. In England, in the 1880's "pants" was considered a dirty word. The Blesbok, a South African antelope, is almost the same color as grapejuice. The first baseball stadium was built in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1909. The chance of contracting an infection during a hospital stay in the US is 1 in 15.

I shall remember when sending post to Britain to moisten the flap with a sponge. ...and to tuck a cabbage leaf under my baseball cap...

The Year is: 1800 1 vote gives Thomas Jefferson the presidency over Aaron Burr 1839 1 vote wins the Massachusetts governorship for Marcus Morton 1868 1 vote saves Andrew Johnson's presidency 1941 1 vote strengthens selective service before World War II 1960 1 vote per precinct gives JFK the presidency 2000 1 vote, your vote, can make the difference November 7th In America, as well as the rest of the world, 1 VOTE DOES MATTER. Be the ONE. Make the difference, SEND THIS TO A FRIEND.

The Empire State building was struck by lightning 8 times during a 24 minute thunderstorm. There are 26 known spellings for the name of Libyan leader Mummar Quaddafi. Carolyn Shoemaker has discovered 32 comets and about 800 asteroids. Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue. The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs. Blue eyes are the most sensitive to light, dark brown the least sensitive. America once used a five-cent bill. 30,000 people work on the US Space Shuttle program. Vladimir Lenin bought 9 Rolls Royces while heading the Soviet Union.

As a young lifeguard at a beach near Dixon, Illinois, future 40th US president Ronald Reagan rescued 77 people from drowning. There were over 4,000 scooter-related injuries in August, 2000. http://www.sciam.com/news/102400/4.html 15,000 people per day are signing up with AOL. There are now 25,000,000 AOL members worldwide, in 16 countries and 8 languages. Clark Gable used to shower more than 4 times a day. Andrzej Makowski is the youngest person on record to receive a driver's license. He received his license when he was just 14 years and 8 months old. Oregon has more ghost towns than any other state. Wayne Gretzky won the goals, assists or points season title 29 times and owned all 3 titles continuously for a 4 year stretch. Procter & Gamble Co. spent $199,000,000 in TV ads in 1996. Ostriches live about 75 years.

Oct. 25th Solar Coronal Mass Ejection Space Weather News for Oct. 25, 2000 http://www.spaceweather.com This morning a full halo coronal mass ejection sped away from the Sun faster than 620 km/s. The leading edge of a solar wind shock wave could arrive in the neighborhood of Earth later this week and possibly trigger auroras. For details and animations please visit http://www.spaceweather.com

This May Explain A Lot New research indicates that incompetent people tend not to know they are incompetent. Not only that, they also tend to be very confident that they know what they're doing -- even more confident of their own competence than people who really do know what they're doing. The New York Times reports that Cornell University psychology professor David Dunning reached those conclusions in a study he conducted with a graduate student, and wrote about his findings in the December 1999 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The researchers concluded that one reason incompetent people do not know how much they do not know, is that the cognitive skills required to be competent are also required for recognizing actual competence. Researcher Justin Kruger told the Times that the incompetence of incompetent people "robs them of their ability to realize" they have a problem. It also makes it difficult for incompetent folks to recognize competence in others. By the way, the researchers say they also noticed that people who can't tell a joke tend not to realize that they're not funny -- and as a result they persist in telling jokes badly. -From the National Association of Science Writers

45% of Americans consistently follow the speed limit. IBM's Q7 could play "Stars and Stripes Forever", using the tape drives as trombones, the line printers as percussion and the bit speaker as the flutes. The London subway (Underground) first opened in 1863. Henry Ford bought a Rolls Royce in 1924. When caught driving it, he said, "My Ford was being serviced so I drove over in the next best thing!" At birth a panda is smaller than a mouse, weighing about four ounces. A 1995 survey of 149 medical students found that all of them, 100%, had been introduced as "doctor" by hospital staff. This not only violates federal and professional guidelines, it's explicitly illegal in Massachusetts. http://upalumni.org/medschool/appendices/appendix-1.html The IBM systems at the Sydney Olympics involved 13 million lines of computer code. The Egyptian's wore something akin to a kilt.

Re the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) mentioned in post 459. This image is awesom Better still go to the url at post 459 and click on the small image to see the larger one. I have never seen one as large as this. Northern climates, please check for Aurorae, please!!! Extreme southeen ones, check too! The come back and tell us all about it!

Lunar Leonids 2000 NASA Science News for October 26, 2000 Next month the Moon will plow through a stream of debris from comet Tempel-Tuttle, the parent of the Leonid meteor shower. Meteoroids that strike the Moon don't cause shooting stars as they do on our planet. Instead, they hit the lunar terrain at high speed. Scientists will be watching for signs of impacts as the Moon heads for a close encounter with the Leonids. FULL STORY at http://spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast26oct_1.htm?list89800

i like the incompetent people explaination. that is classic!

Yup!!! I also put in in screwed. How much better a place that that for such an subject. I guess The Man has more than his share of them working for him...

Thanks to John in Canada, we have this handy URL to use for time corrections for all over the world. I will use it often! http://www.worldtimeserver.com/

As the rest of the world moves their clock hand back and hour tomorrow night, we move the entire state 1000 miles closer to the rest of you. Not sure how it impacts us in relation to the Orient or Australia but we remain on Hawaiian Standard Time Year round. Maybe the world just gets 1000 miles smaller for Standard time?!

Yes, it's that one weekend a year, which is 1 hour longer than all the others, expect one. This weekend is 2 hours longer than that one. It's back to standard time for me.

William, you were right. No one reads Geo on Sunday. Maybe I should stage cricket matches...? Bullfights...? Football games...? (Your choice of definition of "football") *sigh*

On what night is Halloween observed when Oct. 31 falls on a Sunday? Halloween isn't an established holiday by law. It is traditional that Halloween is Oct. 31 no matter what day of the week it falls on. Halloween dates from 837 when Pope Gregory IV instituted All Saints or All Hallows Day on Nov. 1 to take the place of an earlier festival known as the Peace of the Martyrs. The day was set aside to honor all saints, known and unknown. Halloween then is a shortened form of All Hallows Eve - the evening before All Hallows Day. Certainly, you have a choice of celebrating it on Oct. 30, Saturday, if you wish. Many of the area parties will be held then rather than on Sunday. It's probably appropriate to say some people equate Halloween with the occult or Satanism and don't approve of it at all.

FAST FACTS: I don't know about you, but in my student days, mastering English grammar seemed about as easy as learning the art of black magic. Well I was apparently onto something. The word "grammar" entered medieval English as "gramarye," via Scotland. The Scots got it from the French word, "grimoire," which meant a collection of magic spells. The connection was made between grammar and magic because most people then were illiterate, so any linguistic smarty-pants was metaphorically seen as dabbling in sorcery. I wish they had retained grimoire. It sounds more like the way I felt about the subject.

(and the funny thing is halloween was made to divert the evil spirits in paganism believed to roam the earth before midnight of Oct 31 and has nothing to do with satamism at all) the ritual was to dress as scary as possible and place jack-o-lanterns at the gates to scare off the ghosts that wanted to party before All Saint's Day! But the scary thing is that satamists have used the day to celebrate their religion. and that is hilarious (grimoire)!!

ABCNEWS.com Oct. 31� The original Halloween had little to do with fake blood, vampire teeth, or trick-or-treating safety patrols. Halloween traces its ultimate origins back to the Druids�a Celtic priestly class�who believed that the spirits of the dead would roam the earth at the turn of the new year on Nov. 1. According to this pagan Celt tradition, the veil between this world and the other was at its thinnest on this �all souls� day and people would dress up and paint their faces to remove differences between the two worlds so they could better interact with the souls of the dead. Costumed villagers would offer up a feast and then parade to the outskirts of town leading the ghosts away. The Christians added to the festival in the seventh century by making Nov. 1 a celebration of all the known and unknown saints and martyrs�hence the name All Saints Day or All Hallows Day. The night before was known as All Hallow E�en or Even (evening) and the day after, Nov. 2, became known as All Souls Day. Over the centuries, pranks, bonfires, belief in the return of the ghosts and dead souls, fortune-telling and ritualistic games began to be associated with Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. Tricks, Treats and Lit Vegetables Trick-or-treating is a recent 20th century American phenomenon, but it has roots in ancient customs. The Irish originally initiated a custom hundreds of years ago where groups of farmers would go house to house soliciting food for the village. Prosperity was promised for generous givers and threats were made against the stingy villagers. The custom of trick-or-treating is also related to the Gaelic practice of giving cakes to the poor at Samhain or �summer-end,� a seasonal festival that coincided with All Souls Day. They came to be called �soul-cakes,� and in return recipients were obligated to pray for a good harvest. The custom of carving jack-o�-lanterns is thought to derive from an old Irish custom of creating lanterns out of vegetables. In Ireland and Great Britain, customs included throwing stones, vegetables and nuts into a fire �to keep the spooks away.� People would also hollow out turnips and pumpkins and place a lighted candle inside to drive evil spirits away from the home. An American Mega-Holiday The Halloween holiday in America became popular in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, Halloween activities were fairly simple�kids would bob for apples or play with Ouija boards. According to costume experts, witch and ghosts costumes were common, as were Chinese and Japanese dress in response to the Asian arts movement at the end of the century. The modern movie-making industry would later inspire the more elaborate monster and horror-themed costumes we know today. With the help of mass merchandising efforts, Halloween has become a multimillion-dollar event and a good excuse for little kids and plenty of adults to overdose on the sugar.

Happy Samhain (pronounced SAW-wen), everyone. We were all pagan once. Get in touch with your roots! Ovedose on empty calories (sugar)...

Time to look skyward as your go house-to-house: Halloween Aurora Watch Space Weather News for Oct. 31, 2000 http://www.spaceweather.com There is a slight chance for middle-latitude aurora on Halloween night, the result of a solar eruption on Sunday that probably sent a coronal mass ejection in the direction of our planet. For details please visit http://spaceweather.com.

Why did the Russians name their cocktail after Mololtov? Now let's see, was it three parts gasoline to one part vodka, or three parts vodka to one of gasoline? Hold the vodka, please! Add a little borscht? Only for color. Shaken or stirred? Not on your life. As for why the Russians named this simple gasoline bomb -- gas in a bottle with a wick -- after Molotov, they didn't. The Finns, who first threw it at the Russians, named it. And why were the Finns being so rude? Because in 1939 the Russians invaded Finland, once part of the Russian Empire under the czars. The outnumbered Finns had to resort to guerrilla warfare and sarcastically honored Vyacheslav Molotov, then Premier of the USSR, with their "cocktail." But the bombs didn't stop their much bigger foe, and they were soon, uh, Finnished.

Not new but good to remember: From the World Village Project, which says the 1,000 person "village" would have 584 Asians, 124 Africans, 95 Eastern/Western Europeans, 84 Latin Americans, 55 Russians, 52 North Americans, 4 Australians and 2 New Zealanders. As far as language, 165 would speak Mandarin, 86 English, 83 Hindi, 64 Spanish, 58 Russian and 37 Arabic, with the rest made up of people speaking Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, German, French and 200 other languages. There would be 329 Christians, 178 Moslems, 167 non-religious, 132 Hindus, 62 Buddhists, 45 atheists, 3 Jews and the remainder "other." Some 330 would be children, and only 60 would be older than 65. Twenty-eight new babies would be born each year, and 10 people would die every year. Other interesting information: 70 would own automobiles; 200 people would control 75 percent of the wealth and fewer than 10 would have a college education.

+--------------- Bizarre National Holidays ----------------+ NOVEMBER IS November is... International Drum Month November is... Peanut Butter Lover's Month November is... Slaughter Month November 1 is ... Plan Your Epitaph Day November 4 is... Waiting For The Barbarians Day November 5 is... Gunpowder Day November 8 is... Dunce Day November 9 is... Chaos Never Dies Day November 13 is... National Indian Pudding Day November 18 is... Occult Day November 20 is... Absurdity Day November 22 is... Start Your Own Country Day November 28 is... Make Your Own Head Day November 30 is... Stay At Home Because You're Well Day

wow, we wasted tax money to make these days official?

What about November 7th, national throw away your vote day?

exactly! but i'm going to vote anyway. cuz then i can complain!!

Yup... Me too. I vote in each and every election insuring my right to complain about what ensues. And, they are expecting something like less than 50% voter turnout?! A lot of people are gonna be biting their tongues!

At The Smithsonian: Earthquakes Through Time: The ~55,000 earthquakes with magnitudes 5.0 that have occurred since 1960 are sequentially displayed on more than 30 colorful world and regional physiographic maps. The sizes and colors of the dots correspond to the earthquake magnitudes and depths, respectively. An option permits the display of tectonic plate boundaries and names. A powerful advanced-users mode allows the generation of cross-sectional and 3-dimensional views that provide a window into the Earth's interior. Eruptions Through Time: This program sequentially displays ~1300 eruptions from 1960 to 2000 on more than 20 different maps. Plate boundaries and earthquakes can also be shown. Triangle sizes reflect eruption magnitudes and their colors distinguish eruption types. The name of the volcano is displayed for the duration of each eruption, providing a visual primer to the world's most active volcanoes. Smithsonian Exhibit Version: Earthquake and eruption data are combined on a single world map that dramatically emphasizes the point that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions outline plate boundaries. This same program is featured on a 40" monitor in the Geology, Gems, and Minerals Exhibit Hall in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. Seismic Waves: Six major earthquakes are highlighted to show how the resulting seismic-wave fronts travel through the Earth and across its surface. Three simultaneous views can be seen in this program: a cross-section through the Earth's center, a 3-dimensional view of the Earth from space, and seismogram traces where seismic stations sequentially record the arrival of different types of earthquake waves.

------------------- The Great White Pig ------------------- SPAIN - Not many fishermen would expect to haul in a wild boar after casting their nets 3 miles out at sea. But that is just what happened to a group of fishermen in Spain. No one knows how the wild pig managed to end up so far out at sea, or how it managed to survive for so long. The boar will reportedly be released into the wild near their home port of Tarragona as soon as it has recovered fully from its ordeal.

...without comment (some of my best friends live and work in London... my favorite of all cities in the world... London, England - All of London is aghast at a new study that revealed that people who believe they have been abducted by aliens exhibit 5 times higher rates of ESP. Some in the UFO community have said this proves that the implants that aliens leave inside the abductees turn them into human receivers.

Oh dear... Billy Graham was once considered the best Fuller Brush salesman in North Carolina. "Utopia" is an ancient Greek word meaning "nowhere." Casanova traveled with a custom-made portable bath made for two. A dolphin's brain is bigger than a human's. A golf hole is four inches deep. Clark Gable's middle name was Clark - his first name was William. U.S. Presidents Grant, Taft, Hoover, and Eisenhower never held any other elective office.

France's King Louis XIV was on the throne so long he was succeeded by his great grandson. Jousting is the official state sport of Maryland. A cucumber is 96 percent water. A dime has 118 ridges on it.

Election Day in the USA... VOTE!!! "I don't want to set the world on fire," goes the song. "I just want to start a flame in your heart." Or perhaps just induce heartburn, depending on how the romance goes. But no matter what course love takes, we often resort to fire for metaphors to describe it. This particular expression derives from another of life's passionate activities: politics. In 19th century America, people cared enough about their party's candidates to march in parades for them. These campaign parades were great spectacles. Bands joined in the fun, and partisans carried torches to show how strongly they felt about their favorite. Eventually, "carrying a torch" as an expression of passion also became synonymous with strong romantic feelings for someone. Of course, in love as in politics, you don't always win. You may even get burned. (Source: WHY YOU SAY IT by Webb Garrison) ---------------

Okay, so who was it that sat around and counted the ridges on a dime? November is Peanut Butter Lover's Month. Marcia, since you're fond of peanut butter, how are planning on celebrating? Thanks for all the information on Halloween and Samhain. I know I'm late on this, but the Day of the Dead celebrated in Mexico seems a really fascinating holiday.

How I would choose to celebrate it is not appropriate to put here. However I like to get very persoal with peanut butter and share it with someone V E R Y special...

Who invented sunglasses? It was definitely not some Hollywood movie star. But shades of Tinsel Town, the first sunglasses � there was no single inventor -- were used to hide behind. Fifteenth century Chinese judges didn't worry about being recognized. But they did care, in the interests of being even-handed, about hiding their reaction to trial testimony. They didn't want people to follow their eye movements so they wore smoked-tinted quartz spectacles to conceal them. Our modern, widespread use of sunglasses to keep out the glare, however, stems largely from pilots in the 1930s, who began to wear them to shield their eyes from the sun. Civilians quickly emulated the aviators. Some even adopted sunglasses for fashion as well as protection, hoping to make their social life take off. (Source: EXTRAORDINARY ORIGINS OF EVERYDAY THINGS by Charles Panati)

FAST FACTS: Elevators rank as the safest form of transportation and have the record of only one fatality every 100 million miles traveled, That's pretty good, unless you happen to be the one. Steps on the other hand, are five times more dangerous than elevators. That's because very few people trip over an elevator. (Source: USELESS DIGEST)

The ridges on ccorduroy are called "wales." There are eleven time zones in Russia. Fish can become seasick if kept aboard a ship. The average American carries four credit cards. It takes four hours to hard boil an ostricj egg: it weighs 30 ounds.

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I own a Mrs. Byrne's dictionary, from it I learned that a deuteragonist is a supporting actor. Mrs Byrne's can offer hours of fun browsing. About that ostrich egg...How many omelettes could you get out of one?

Love obscure words. If make obfuscating that much more effective! WHY CAN WE SEE THOUGH GLASS? Because solid though it may seem, glass is really a viscous liquid. I'll pause a moment while that crosses your synapses and bounces among your neurons. Mind you that's a viscous, not vicious liquid such as a mix of vodka and champagne. A viscous liquid stiffens when cooled, but never becomes completely solid. Unlike solids, in which the atoms arrange themselves in a rigid, crystalline molecular structure, glass atoms just hang out, helter- skelter-like. Light can squeeze between them. The molecular make-up of glass, unlike that of ordinary solids, such as wood, also keeps it from absorbing visible light. Its structure also prevents the loss of light through internal reflections, characteristic of a solid. Only glass' outer surface reflects light, which makes it considerably more useful than, say, silver or tin for eyeglass lenses.

superheating of sand makes glass, right?

selting the silica in sand and adding Borax for flux... Yup!

Melting the silica in sand and adding flux makes glass.

The largest tree in the world weighs more than 6,000 tons. There are over 15,000 people in the Witness Protection Program. More than 90% of battery lead is recycled, compared to 62.5 percent of aluminum cans, 35% of glass containers and 69% of newspapers. The anthrax vaccine program has clearly resulted in the loss of more personnel than the very thing it was designed to protect against. - Dan Marohn, American Airlines & Air National Guard F-16 pilot [More than half the pilots in his 163rd Fighter Squadron left over the anthrax vaccine.] RAM is 25,000 times cheaper in 2000 than in 1985. One study showed that people who drank one to three cups of coffee per day were 30% less likely to commit suicide than non-drinkers. Those drinking six cups a day were 80% less likely to kill themselves. A "threnody" is a song of lamentation, or "dirge". The longest traffic jam in Japan's history was 84 mile long and involved 15,000 vehicles. Despite being a nine-inch-tall bird (unlike in cartoons), the roadrunner can run as fast as a human sprinter.