h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bok choi would be so tasty with haggis.

Today I learnt that the national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.

My brother called and said he was doing an online quiz and it asked what the national animal of Scotland was, giving as the answers a) highland cow; b) unicorn; c) haggis; 4) badger (it wasn't that, but something like); or e) the loch ness monster. He tried highland cow and it said the answer was unicorn - I asked him what the quiz was...What kind of princess are you?

So of course I had to google it and it's true:

http://www.visitscotland.com/about/uniquely-scottish/national-animal-unicorn/

I lived in Orkney for 10 years and never leart this. I'm completely charmed by it

Deb

I recently learned this as well. It wasn't from a quiz for me. It was just a meme that said, "Google the national animal of Scotland, you'll be glad you did." I did, and I was.

http://www.thecut.com/2016/03/unicorns-real-but-ugly.html

Unicon deer are sometimes encountered
http://www.unicornsrule.com/unicorn-deer/

TIL

Before the wonderfully frustrating Infocom text adventure (which I still haven't finished playing ), there was another "official" Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game. It was licensed by Pan Books and DNA but that permission was later rescinded to make way for the Infocom game.


This was definitely a good thing as the first game was apparently a real stinker.

http://advgamer.blogspot.com/2018/07/missed-classic-56-hitch-hikers-guide-to.html

It very much seems they just picked some names, characters, objects, and planets out of the original radio series or books and slapped them into a game with no consideration of plot and character development.

Still an interesting story.

at my advanced age I have just learned how to play Beer Pong.

I still haven't learned that. So far this month I've learned how to identify Catalba Trees and Eastern Red Cedar Trees. I like both kinds of trees a lot, though the Catalbas have a habit of taking root in the worst possible places.

Sounds like my kind of tree. (The catalba.)

'Minds me of a potted pathos philodendron I had once.

Kept uprooting itself and replanting itself in the bare earth.

I finally gave up and let it grow where it wanted to.

That's generally the best idea.

TIL
The word "rooster" was created by puritan Americans as a euphemism for the word "cock" to avoid sexual connotations.

So they couldn't just say cockerel then

Whenever I'm riding on The Tube, I get a big kick out of hearing the proper recorded voice pronounce "Cockfoster".

I also learned today that a cockerel is specifically a younger male chicken, less than a year old.

I learned a helluva lot about Power Point, just by trial and error and fiddling around. (I am putting together a slide show of our holiday using power point rather than just a slide show, so I can include maps and stuff.)

Don’t forget the heavy-duty padlocks for the doors, so your guests can’t escape during the slideshow

I always wondered about cockpit. Why did the puritans miss that (maybe some temporal displacement issue, I guess)
Maybe I'll just go and look up the etymology.

Ah, derived from the workspace of the coxswain on Navy ships. No intercourse or aviary related predecessors.

You mean the roosterpit. Before starting the plane, you'll need fuel so open the stoprooster. You don't want to go off half roostered. For badminton you'll need a shuttlerooster. Under the fridge and cupboards you might find rooster-roaches. And after all this I'm sure you're ready for a stiff roostertail.

All this to avoid using a word derived form the French word coq?

The French will continue using this word, and people will still eat coq au vin.

Heh... The quite British fellow who runs my local pub (in Texas, with his Arizonian wife) occasionally cooks a dish he calls "drunken chicken". It has mushrooms, onions, carrots... it's cooked in a red wine sauce...

It's coq au vin!

But he just can't allow himself to admit he cooks a French dish in his British pub.