heardsaid

I refer of course to money.

2007-10-15T01:15:00.000-09:00

The Economics of Stripping. According to researchers at University of New Mexico strippers make more money when they're ovulating, because it's at the time when men find them most attractive: "Surprisingly, Miller found that strippers who were in the estrus phase made $354 per shift compared to $90 during the luteal phase and $170 more than during the menstrual phase. The use of birth-control pills didn't help results, with woman on oral contraception earning about $80 less per shift."

Pi

2007-01-14T19:46:00.000-09:00

To calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the observable universe to a precision of one proton, you would only need 50 digits of pi. Regardless, mathematicians have so far calculated it to 1.2 trillion decimal places.

Aptly named

2006-10-24T19:34:00.000-09:00

The Barenaked Ladies record one track of every studio album while nude.

UsedFAQs

2006-10-14T14:22:00.000-09:00

Whilst HeardSaid is taking a sabbatical, we recommend UsedFAQs which posts random answers from Frequently Asked Questions on a variety of subjects. [via]

Fake Money

2006-08-20T12:45:00.000-09:00

Did you know every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury? [Nope, we didn't Fran, thanks!]

Who doesn't love baristas?

2006-07-16T18:44:00.000-09:00

The first 4 bytes (the so-called "Magic number") of any Java class file are, in hexadecimal, 0xCAFEBABE.

How fitting!

2006-06-14T08:05:00.000-09:00

In Texas, the State Troopers of the Highway Patrol wear cowboy hats.

Says the cabbie...

2006-05-16T22:42:00.000-09:00

Clark county, Nevada (Las Vegas, everybody) is the only county in the country where it's illegal to own and operate your own taxi. "The cab companies own this town," said our cabbie on the way from the airport, although that might be a bit of a hyperbole.

No, really, officer!

2006-03-20T21:00:00.000-09:00

In California, it's illegal to drive barefoot unless you're going to, or coming from, the beach.

Gullible?

2006-02-11T07:23:00.000-09:00

Website that's similar to HeardSaid, and to be honest they're posting more often. [via]

wharf

2006-01-30T05:00:00.000-09:00

The word "wharf" stands for "Ware House At River Front".

Dildo fun!

2005-12-02T15:07:00.000-09:00

The first electrical dildo was sold in 1911.

A town in Newfoundland is named Dildo. Allegedly the name originates from the town's earlier industry in the 19th century -- carving dildos from whalebone.

The band Steely Dan is named after a giant dildo.

World AIDS Day

2005-12-01T07:35:00.000-09:00

Strange Reagan

2005-11-18T14:24:00.000-09:00

When Ronald Reagan was given his first tour of the White House after being made president of the US he demanded a visit the war room he'd seen in Stanley Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove. He was somewhat annoyed to discover it had been built on a soundstage.

Interrobang

2005-11-18T08:55:00.000-09:00

A combination of an exclamation point and an question mark, called an interrobang, was used as a brief fad in the 60s to communicate disbelief or emphasis of a printed question.

You're what‽

It has a home in Unicode U+203D, but not much else anymore besides the Partnership for A Drug-Free America (of all places).

UPS brown

2005-09-24T15:07:00.000-09:00

UPS trucks are painted white on the top in an effort to reflect sunlight, and keep the cabin cool.

A sweet ride

2005-08-29T19:21:00.000-09:00

The cheapest car ever made was the Red Bug Buckboard, made by Briggs & Stratton in the 1920s. It sold for $125 (about $1300 today) and weighed about 250 pounds.
The most interesting part: it was electric.

Ant Farmers

2005-08-21T09:59:00.000-09:00

Leafcutter ants are the only species on the planet, apart from humans, to cultivate their own food. The ants, usually found in the rainforests and other tropical areas of America, grow a special fungus in their nests.
They get their name because they cut pieces of leaves which they harvest in the fungus gardens. The fungus is then used for food.

The secret life of Roosevelt(s)

2005-08-18T20:16:00.000-09:00

You might already know about Eleanor Roosevelt's affair with another woman (or, you might not), but what you probably hadn't heard was that Eleanor was FDR's first cousin (which is convenient with respect to names and all).
Read all about it.

Nevermind how...

2005-08-16T19:33:00.000-09:00

Armadillos can contract syphilis. In fact, they are the only animal (apart from humans) that can.

Not quite workin' like a dog.

2005-07-17T16:07:00.000-09:00

Ringo didn't play on one single Beatles album. Paul laid all the studio percussion tracks.

Belly Bomb

2005-06-24T10:47:00.000-09:00

If a human being were to eat black pudding followed by king prawns and washed down with a glass of milk, due to the un-stable chemical mixture now sitting in his or hers gut, the poor individual's stomache would literally explode within a matter of minutes ! [Ugh -- thanks Franchesca]

Spooky

2005-06-22T10:34:00.000-09:00

In the Steven Spielberg film 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' during the scene when we've discovered that Roy has built a scale model of Devil's Point in his living room, the television is on and we can hear the sound of a postman calling at a front door. He says: "I have a package for Gillian Anderson."

The actress Gillian Anderson would later play Dana Scully for nine years on 'The X-Files'.

Crispy

2005-06-18T11:47:00.000-09:00

A new Franchesca fact. Did you know that a human being can safely live on a diet of one packet of regular crisps a day because of their high fat and water content.

Eh?

2005-06-03T13:12:00.000-09:00

Alexander Graham Bell's wife was deaf.

Free Travel

2005-05-30T09:40:00.000-09:00

While the London Metropolitan Police have free transport on the trains, buses and underground systems of London - the same is not true of the British Transport Police (who enforce the law on those same systems).

Hello and welcome to ...

2005-05-28T05:05:00.000-09:00

A great example from Music Thing of how sometimes it's vitally important to keep your copyright. The man who composed the four notes which used to appear on Channel Four's logo (Daaa-daaa-da-daaaa) became very rich indeed. "Every time that sequence was played, David Dundas was paid £3.50. Every week, for ten years, Dundas received a cheque for £1,000 from Channel Four. "

One with the force

2005-05-24T12:42:00.000-09:00

Here is a scene from the shooting script of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith which explains the one thing many fans had been dying to know. Why do some Jedi's burn up whilst others just fade away?

222 INT. POLIS MASSA-OBSERVATION DOME-NIGHT

On the isolated asteroid of Polis Massa, YODA meditates.

YODA: Failed to stop the Sith Lord, I have. Still much to learn, there is ...

QUI -GON: (V.O.) Patience. You will have time. I did not. When I became one with the Force I made a great discovery. With my training, you will be able to merge with the Force at will. Your physical self will fade away, but you will still retain your consciousness. You will become more powerful than any Sith.

YODA: Eternal consciousness.

QUI-GON: (V.O.) The ability to defy oblivion can be achieved, but only for oneself. It was accomplished by a Shaman of the Whills. It is a state acquired through compassion, not greed.

YODA: . . . to become one with the Force, and influence still have . . . A power greater than all, it is.

QUI-GON: (V.O.) You will learn to let go of everything. No attachment, no thought of self. No physical self.

YODA: A great Jedi Master, you have become, Qui-Gon Jinn. Your apprentice I gratefully become.

YODA thinks about this for a minute, then BAIL ORGANA enters the room and breaks his meditation.

Considering the big long list of things which aren't explained it's odd that this couldn't be worked in somehow. Then again, check out of that exposition... [via Amygdala via Sore Eyes]

Machu Picchu

2005-05-21T12:16:00.000-09:00

Should you find yourself at the top of Machu Picchu and suddenly worried about whether you left the gas on, don't fret. You can call home on your mobile phone. Yes, that's right, there's a signal.

Which is more than I can say for the train route from Bournemouth to Derby. (Thanks Dave!)

Damselflies go like shit off a stick

2005-05-19T10:04:00.000-09:00

Damselflies can fly 15m in a single second from a standing start, and can reach a top speed of 40 mph.

Naked Mole Rats

2005-05-18T05:41:00.000-09:00

Naked mole rats are fossorial (live underground) and have a fairly consistent temperature.

They have no circadian rhythm and sleep/wake when it suits them. This occurs on no particular schedule at all.

Numbers

2005-05-10T11:22:00.000-09:00

The Globe Theatre, the original in the 1600s, had a capacity crowd of three thousand. There were only two hundred thousand people in London at the time so it would take just seventy-five performances before everyone in the city had seen one of Shakepeare's newest.

On election night

2005-05-05T14:50:00.000-09:00

The Welsh Assembly is the only elected body in the Western world, if not the world, to have a 50/50 split between men and women members.

Happy May Day!

2005-05-01T09:04:00.000-09:00

The use of 'mayday' as a distress call originated with the French m'aidez (help me) or m'aider (to render help to me), and has nothing to do with the ancient spring festival or the international working class holiday.

Although if you want to dance around a big pole whilst your ship sinks, that's up to you.

A pigeon pair

2005-05-01T08:48:00.000-09:00

When pigeons mate, the female lays two eggs - one male and one female. When the eggs hatch, the chicks grow up together and, eventually, mate to produce two eggs - one male and one female.

Which explains why pigeons are so stupid. They've got to the bottom of the gene pool and have started drilling.

Special Crossover Unit

2005-04-30T19:53:00.000-09:00

Richard Belzer plays Detective John Munch on the series "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit". The character originated as a regular cast member of "Homicide: Life on the Street". Two cop shows, two colons, one Munch. A character from one show landing a prime spot on another show that's not a spin-off is unusual in an of itself.

Belzer as Munch has recently become the most prolific character in prime time TV history, having appeared on six different series: Homicide, SVU, the original Law & Order, The X Files, the short-lived The Beat and most recently in an episode of Law & Order's newest franchisee, Trial by Jury.

Self pimp - Crossover Grid and Live Journal community to discuss Crossover Grid.

Coinage

2005-04-25T12:18:00.000-09:00

Franchesca writes: "Whilst realizing I have no money, for some reason I decided to add up each demomination of coins and notes in the UK to see how much I would have if I had one of each. Oddly enough it works out at £88.88p . Try it urself if you dont believe me ... and don't forget like most people do, the £2 coin!"

i-equine

2005-04-25T12:14:00.000-09:00

In 1967 at the height of the foot and mouth epidemic, horse racing was banned. The authorities resorted to electronic races with imaginary horses, but to give an extra level of authenticity on BBC's Grandstand, Peter O'Sullivan was drafted in to commentate on these unreal events. Footage exists of him getting excited over a close finish between two horses which didn't exist.

Little Ghengises everywhere!

2005-04-25T11:57:00.000-09:00

It is estimated that one in two hundred modern Mongol men can trace their genetic heritage back to Ghengis Khan. Now that is what I call putting it about a bit.

Carrots!

2005-04-23T02:04:00.000-09:00

The carrot is not a vegetable, but a herb. Carrots used to be purple in colour, until someone decided that the orange ones tasted better (a fact that anyone who has eaten Opal Fruits/Starburst knows to be 100% true). Carrots do not improve your night vision - that's propaganda spread by the British government during WWII to 'explain' why their pilots were able to fly at night. In actual fact, it was down to the invention of radar, something the govmint and the RAF wanted to keep secret.

Postcodes

2005-04-17T12:33:00.000-09:00

There is a house in Liverpool which has its own postcode. When postcodes were being handed out, the doctor who lived there ascerted what authority he had at the time and they gave him one. Its stayed that way ever since.

Rugby Pope

2005-04-13T12:57:00.000-09:00

The Welsh Rugby Team only seem to win the Grand Slam in a year the Pope dies. They won it this year the same year Pope John Paul II dies, and the last time they did was in 1978 , the same year as the death of Pope John Paul I. [Thanks Fred!]

Peat

2005-04-12T15:14:00.000-09:00

Peat bogs cover more than 1% of the Earth's surface. This is equal in area to about one half of the United States.

Peat is a major part of the carbon cycle, and it stores lots of carbon that is subsequently not released as carbon dioxide. Ecologists are worried that burning peat and disturbing peat bogs might be a contributing factor to global warning.

Ickle Independent State

2005-04-11T04:27:00.000-09:00

Monaco is half the size of New York's Central Park.

Nonchalant arachnids

2005-04-07T10:14:00.000-09:00

Australia is home to the world's only whistling spider.

First Time?

2005-04-07T08:53:00.000-09:00

Franchesca tells us about The Real Thing:

Only two people in the company know Coca-Cola's formula, and each of them only knows half of it.

Coca-Cola's name was translated into Chinese as "bite the wax tadpole."

Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine.

A tooth left in a glass of Coca-Cola will dissolve overnight.

Some fun... well... just facts

2005-04-05T14:49:00.000-09:00

40% of the floppy disks in the world are made in Wahpeton, North Dakota. The small town is also home to the world's largest catfish, and about 10,000 people. It's sort of an armpit of a place, though, so I wouldn't much recommend going to visit.

Some fun French facts

2005-04-05T13:38:00.000-09:00

Some fun French facts from one of our readers, Jacques:

"The real name of my country is not France, but France Republic - not many know this!

Louis XIV bathed once a year.

There are 450 different types of cheese in the world, and 240 come from France!"

Thanks Jacques!

Gobble. Zzzzzzz.

2005-04-03T12:28:00.000-09:00

Another contribution from Franchesca. Eating turkey makes people sleepy. Which presumably explains why I never feel tired after Christmas dinner. We all eat steak in our household.

Somebody Told Me

2005-04-03T10:40:00.000-09:00

Brandon Flowers, the singer for The Killers, thinks musicians who play in different kinds of band (ska, pop, etc) are phonies.
"I've heard rumours about [members of] that band (The Bravery) being in a different kind of band, and how do you defend that? If you say, 'My heart really belongs to what I'm doing now,' but you used to be in a ska band."

The thing is though that The Killers' drummer, Ronnie Vannucci, was the former drummer for the Las Vegas ska band Attaboy Skip. This makes Mr. Flowers' statement not only stupid, but also somewhat hypocritical.

It's all in the crinkles

2005-04-03T05:14:00.000-09:00

Snack expert Dave Green tells me, as we sit at the Mason's Arms on Seymour Place, that the reason that crinkle-cut crisps taste better is that the crinkles create a higher surface area for flavourings to adhere to, thus maximising taste. Nothing to do with the wine, then?

April New Year's Day!

2005-04-01T21:12:00.000-09:00

April Fool's Day started because Pope Gregory XIII moved New Year's Day from April to January in 1582. Back then, news didn't travel very fast, so some countries implemented the new New Year sooner than others. Those who either hadn't heard or didn't believe that the date had been moved continued to celebrate in April. They became the butt of jokes and pranks, and the tradition now continues.

Fishy

2005-04-01T12:34:00.000-09:00

The combination of shrimp and Vitamin C tablets will cause arsenic poisoning. [thanks Franchesca!]

Falling Junkies

2005-03-31T11:10:00.000-09:00

In Poplar (North London, UK) there are a block of flats that are notorious for dead bodies being found on the ground at the bottom of them.

What happens is a heroin user dies from an overdose in one of the flats, his 'friends' then throw his dead body out of the window so that no-one knows where he comes from. The ambulance/police scrape them up and life goes on...

Shakespeare and Words

2005-03-31T08:53:00.000-09:00

from Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue

"A man of Shakespeare's linguistic versatility must have possessed thousands of words he never used because he didn't like or require them. Not once in his plays can you find the words Bible, Trinity, or Holy Ghost, and yet that is not to suggest he was not familiar with them."

Cashews

2005-03-29T11:21:00.000-09:00

Cashew nuts grow on top of the fruit, which looks something like a yellow bell pepper. Honestly, it looks a little obscene somehow.
It tastes something like a bell pepper too, but a little sweet. Also it leaves this sort of tacky, drying taste/feeling in your mouth.
And the juice, although clear, will stain your clothes. And those suckers are juicy.

Pollution?

2005-03-28T18:00:00.000-09:00

Mosses and lichens are used as pollution indicators. Mosses and lichens are non-vascular (no system of veins to transport materials around the plant), so they rely heavily on moisture in the air. Because of this, they are highly sensitive to air pollution, and these plants are rarely found or are completely absent in heavily polluted areas. If you've got a bunch of moss in your backyard, that's actually a good sign.

Secret of cats' nine lives

2005-03-28T12:12:00.000-09:00

Cats purr at a frequency which stimulates blood flow, thus accelerating healing. This allows cats to survive injuries which would kill a dog of the same size.

Whether putting a purring cat on your head would cure a headache is currently open to question.

Hey, I died twice

2005-03-27T06:52:00.000-09:00

Petra, the dog from BBC's Blue Peter whose death was mourned by million in the 70s and honoured by a bronze bust effectively died twice. The animal was introduced to viewers as a puppy in the mid-sixties. But that baby dog died of complications the day before the next programme was due to go out, and so the then producer of the show had to rush around all the pet shops in north London with a photo looking for a duplicate pup. Luckily he found one and none of children watching knew any the wiser.

angels like whiskey, too.

2005-03-27T05:12:00.000-09:00

apparently, 1% of the contents of a whiskey barrel evaporate.
distillers call this the "angel share".

pleasure in death.

2005-03-27T05:00:00.000-09:00

i once heard that oysters die happy.

being vegan and hence avoiding the consumption of any animal products, these news surprised me quite a bit.

apparently, scientists found out that if living oysters are drenched in lemon juice (as is apparently common practice when eating them), they produce a hormone that puts them into a state of ecstasy. hearing that made me wonder how one measures ecstasy levels in oysters. anyway.
one might hence argue that the oysters death by gastric acid (one doesn't chew oysters, apparently), really isn't all that bad, really isn't torture or anything, but the perfect combination of pleasure for both the eater and the eaten. pleasurable death for one, pleasurable protein consumption for the other. good grace.

i think i'll still stay away from oysters.

Wordiness Rewarded

2005-03-26T10:02:00.000-09:00

Some people cannot tolerate the works of Charles Dickens, calling them tedious, overblown, and desperately in need of a decent pruning by a ruthless editor. When Dickens-defenders jump into the fight, they're quickly neutralized by the fact that Dickens' style wasn't dictated by artistic need... the man was paid by the word.

More?

2005-03-25T04:38:00.000-09:00

When writing, Charles Dickens would often stand at a mirror and would act out the characters words so that he could get the inflection just right. Which is probably why they're so vivid.

Good Friday

2005-03-24T01:41:00.000-09:00

On Good Friday, many songs are banned from broadcast on RTE Radio, the Irish public broadcasting company. The most tenuously linked to Easter being a Beatles song from Magical Mystery Tour... "The fool on the hill".

Death By Kidney Bean

2005-03-21T08:32:00.000-09:00

Okay, I don't really know if you can die from it, but undercooked red kidney beans are toxic. You can get sick from eating fewer than a handful, so if you're going to partake of them, make sure to boil them for at least ten minutes.

Praise you, Charlie Brown

2005-03-20T07:04:00.000-09:00

The opening line of Fat Boy Slim's track, 'Praise You' was inspired a collection of Peanuts' strips called 'You've Come a Long Way, Snoopy' (the actual line in the song is 'We've come a long, long way together...')

Play some Skynyrd!

2005-03-19T14:47:00.000-09:00

"Sweet Home, Alabama" was recorded in the morning, and someone brought in donuts for the recording session. During the last take, they could see that someone was helping themselves to their stash. Thus, "My donuts, God damn!" became the final lyrics to a Skynyrd classic.

Toe length

2005-03-18T10:53:00.000-09:00

Historically, the length of shoes' toes corresponded to how peaceful the country was. In times of peace, shoes with very long, curly toes were fashionable, but in times of strife and civil war the toes were shorter, presumably because it's hard to run away with long-toed shoes on.

Zebras

2005-03-17T22:22:00.000-09:00

Humans have been able to tame horses without too many problems; while they buck and kick, the horses will eventually calm down enough to be properly ridden. However, zebras will never calm down and aren't suitable for riding. Therefore, they've never been domesticated.

According to the Oregon Zoo, if you see someone riding a zebra in a movie, it's probably a horse painted with black and white stripes.

Shiny

2005-03-17T14:42:00.000-09:00

The maximum length of CDs was based on Beethoven's 9th symphony.
[thanks Franchesca!]

Osteoporosis

2005-03-17T07:05:00.000-09:00

A new study has come out that says milk doesn't help prevent osteoporosis. According to the study, which my milk-hating friend mentioned but did not display to me, bones absorb calcium through weight-bearing. So instead of lifting glasses of milk to keep your bones healthy, you should head to the gym and do some weight lifting instead.

Red tape

2005-03-16T01:43:00.000-09:00

When you become a Member of Parliament and take up your place in the House of Commons, you're given your coat peg (just like in school) and underneath is a little loop of red tape designed to hang your sword in. One wonders if 'cutting through the red tape' originally meant using your sword to settle an issue instead of negotiation.

(Proxy blogged by Kevin Marks.)

Easy way to lose weight

2005-03-15T08:31:00.000-09:00

Franchesca writes: Eating celery results in negative calories.

Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame Trivia

2005-03-15T04:10:00.000-09:00

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders sang backup on U2's "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" on 1984 album "The Unforgettable Fire." She's listed as "Mrs. Christine Kerr" in the liner notes; her husband at the time was Jim Kerr of Simple Minds.

Flying dishes

2005-03-14T12:42:00.000-09:00

My Mother was telling me the other that a friend had moved into a new flat so had to buy a new saucer to get more TV channels.

Fun with words!

2005-03-14T02:24:00.000-09:00

"Facetious" is the only word in the Oxford English Dictionary where all the vowels appear in alphabetical order.

"Almost" and "Effort" are the longest words in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

Venus Flytrap

2005-03-13T17:48:00.000-09:00

The standard venus flytrap can only shut and reopen 10 times in total. It doesn't really "spring" shut; it takes anywhere from 5-15 seconds for a venus flytrap to close (amended: apparently, the literature says that a flytrap shuts in a second or less. Perhaps this is true in nature, but I've tripped venus flytraps before, and you could definitely watch them shut. My friends and I never got our fingers stuck. I don't know why some researchers had to video tape a fly trap shutting. FYI, this was in a botanical garden and they were small flytraps. Anyway, they shut b/c cells on the outer layer of the plant expand, which pushes the trap shut. This is also related to why it can only shut a set number of times.). Once it closes around a victim, the flytrap exudes digestive enzymes to kill the fly and break down the nutrients so the nutrients can be absorbed into the plant.

Also, venus flytraps don't need flies to live. They normally grow in nitrogen-deficient soil, so they're carnivorous for added nutrients. However, if grown in properly fertilized soil, they'll do just fine without meat.

There are also many other kinds of carnivorous plants, including bladder worts, pitcher plants, etc. Check it out.

More information can be found at "Barry's Carnivorous Plant Page."

Big Hands = ?

2005-03-13T11:07:00.000-09:00

Your heart is about the size of your fist.

Mummy!

2005-03-13T04:11:00.000-09:00

Here is how Egyptian mummies got their name: "The word "mummy" comes from the Arabic word mumiya which means bitumen. Bitumen is also called pitch and is a black tar like substance that can be found in mountains in the Middle East. It's like molasses, but it's darker and thicker. When Arabs invaded Egypt many years ago and discovered mummies, the mummies had a dark coating on them which reminded the Arabs of mumiya. So the Arabs thought these mummies were covered with mumiya, even though mumiya was not really used. The Arabs began calling these bodies mumiya. As the years went by, mumiya would turn into the english word "mummy." [more facts about mummies can be found here]

Can the craving with cardamom

2005-03-11T11:08:00.000-09:00

Cardamom, a spice and mild stimulant, can be helpful in reducing nicotine cravings when giving up smoking.

Dimples

2005-03-10T21:10:00.000-09:00

Dimples are really flaws in the musculature of the cheek. That area simply has a divot in the muscle.

Removing splinters

2005-03-09T13:04:00.000-09:00

If you have a splinter and don't fancy digging it out with a needle and tweezers, use sticky tape instead: smooth the tape over the splinter, pull the tape off and the splinter will come with it. Never tried it, so no idea if it works, but I'll try to remember it for next time I get a chunk of 2 by 4 in my thumb.

Olive Oil

2005-03-07T19:28:00.000-09:00

Olive oil is the only vegetable or fruit oil that you can safely drink without harming your insides.

Good call.

2005-03-07T15:26:00.000-09:00

Linus Torvalds had originally intended to call his operating system Freax, and it was known as such until a professor recommended that the name be changed to the moniker he had been using internally to refer to the system: Linux.

trees

2005-03-06T22:49:00.000-09:00

You can only use growth rings to count the age of a tree in areas with the distinct four seasons (for example, in most of the US). In tropical areas, trees may lay down multiple growth rings in a year, since a new growth ring occurs whenever the weather changes from dry to wet.

In the United States, you can also tell the difference between wood grown in the spring and the summer when looking at slices of woody plants in a microscope; in the spring, the cells the tree creates are larger, and summer cells tend to be more compact. This is due to the greater amount of water that is usually available during the spring, which fuels faster and more growth.

dandelions

2005-03-06T20:48:00.000-09:00

If you mow dandelions, they will cease to grow taller. Instead, they will grow outwards just underneath the height of the mower blades. Digging them up is a much better removal option.

The London Underground

2005-03-06T07:23:00.000-09:00

About a third of the tunnels in the London Underground system are not used. There are around 40 unused stations which have been bricked up, including British Museum on the Central Line which served - surprise surprise - the British Museum, and Aldwych which is now used as a TV/film set. Some stations, such as Charing Cross and Embankment, are so close together that it's quicker to get out and walk.

Pole vaulting

2005-03-06T07:12:00.000-09:00

The sport of pole vaulting developed from the Dutch habit of using poles to vault the many dykes and ditches they had to navigate which did not have bridges and which could not easily be circumnavigated. Without the pole vault, the Dutch would have had a very, very long walk to work.

Be warned...

2005-03-04T02:16:00.000-09:00

Sharks will not attack you unless you're wet.

Nails

2005-03-03T13:53:00.000-09:00

Your fingernails grow faster than your toenails. And the nails on your dominant hand grow faster than on the other hand. (I saw this on Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and I choose to believe it.)

Victory at a price

2005-03-03T12:23:00.000-09:00

When Admiral Lord Nelson was given his fatal wound on board The Victory during The Battle of Trafalgar his first instinct was to conceal the fact from his men. So he covered up the medals on his lapel which had been a sign of leadership in the weeks leading up to the fight so that from a distance he would seem like just another sailor. As he lay in the hold of the ship word was passed to his second in command. Again, to keep the low awareness in the fleet, instead of the usual signalling methods expected for orders, an able man was ordered to take a tiny boat and row through the thick of the battle. The deputy knew that something was wrong as soon as he saw the young man's face.

WD40

2005-03-02T23:34:00.000-09:00

WD40 is called WD40 because it was the 40th water displacement formula that the developers tried, and the first one to work.

All smiles

2005-03-02T23:08:00.000-09:00

Real smiles use different muscles when compared with fake smiles, but we're generally rubbish at telling who's putting it on. Real smiles involve a raising of the cheek muscles and a dip in the eyebrow, whereas fake smiles just stretch the corners of the mouth back and don't 'reach the eyes'. It's thought that our general inability to tell real from fake actually helps us to get along, because people can use fake smiles as a sort of social lubricant to make life easier. (Via Brainiac, again.)

Which is interesting enough, but when you put it together with the information that Americans and Brits smile differently, well, you can draw your own conclusions:

While we British smile by pulling our lips back and upwards and exposing our lower teeth, Americans are more likely simply to part their lips and stretch the corners of their mouths. (Via BoingBoing and Neil Gaiman.)

There's also a correlation between how genuine a smiler was at school and how happy they were in later life, with the genuine smilers happier than the fakers. I wonder if there's a correlation between how genuine a celeb is and how they are perceived by the public/how successful they are.

I wish Posh Spice would learn how to smile genuinely. Or just go away completely, actually.

Out of out takes

2005-02-27T06:21:00.000-09:00

The reason that the film company MGM very rarely features deleted scenes on the dvds of their older films, particularly those by Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese is because in the early 1990s they junked reels and reels of unused film to make a saving on storage costs, which included out takes from the classics by those directors. In the end they saved themselves twenty thousand dollars.

Nary a Hair: Why Cyclists Shave Their Legs

2005-02-26T00:37:00.000-09:00

Male cyclists--road racers in particular--have shaved the hair from their legs for decades. The following are the reasons why:

Road Rash: less painful when sliding on pavement during a crash (similar to carpet burn)
Aerodynamics: less wind resistance
Sanitation: hairs hold dirt and debris that can get into wounds; hairs also make changing bandages more difficult
Massage: easier for a masseuse to work muscles
Aesthetics: more muscle definition, smoother and faster look

What's the time, Mr Wolf?

2005-02-25T15:50:00.000-09:00

Despite being seen as the same, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and UTC (Co-ordinated Universal Time) can actually differ by up to 0.9 seconds because of different ways of calculating GMT.

Neither the English term 'Co-ordinated Universal Time' nor the French term 'Temps Universel Coordinné' result in the acronym UTC. This is because UTC is based on the "workaday mean solar time scale, UT-1, which is based on the somewhat irregular rotation of the Earth", so really it's 'Universal Time - Co-ordinated'.

Card slot

2005-02-25T14:16:00.000-09:00

The section above the numeric keypad on a computer keyboard which includes the Caps Lock & Num Lock lights doesn't have keys blocking the way because when the peripheral was originally designed one of the main applications was in banking and this would be the perfect place to slot a credit card, punch card or business card when keying in details.

Baaaa!

2005-02-25T13:33:00.000-09:00

Dame Ellen Macarthur was today given the Freedom of the Isle of Wight. Which means she has the right to drive sheep down the High Street in Cowes.

Course, the trouble with driving sheep is that they've got no brakes and are a bugger to steer.

Pale face

2005-02-24T09:22:00.000-09:00

I've often wondered why the families in portrait photographs from the mid-1800s always seem slightly unreal. Apparently because of the limited amount of light in photographic studios, the subjects would have their faces covered in white make up to reflect better in the camera. So that the subjects could keep perfectly still, a brace was used to hold the waist of the woman in the chair or any children standing by in place. The other reason that family isn't smiling is because to do so would seem foolish because they'd be making fun of something which was massively expensive at the time. Also -- and this explains everything -- the subjects often had their eye lids closed during the taking of the photo and their eyes would be painted in later when the image was printed which is why the iris never looks quite right.

What's loudest?

2005-02-23T11:34:00.000-09:00

Babies produce more noise than pneumatic drills. Babies hit 123 decibels when screaming, whereas a pneumatic drill only produces 119 decibels. Ok, so there's only 4 decibels in it, but still, louder is louder.

(And yes, I am watching Brainiac at the moment.)