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

There are seven McDonald's in Bielefeld (Germany).

where are they i only knew of three when i was there in the early 90s??

I don't know, really. I saw a sign in the street telling me so, which I didn't quite find extremely, how to say, useful?

Hey, wait, you've been to Bielefeld before

Redditch has three McDonalds, one in the Kingfisher Centre and two drive-thrus. At one point there were four, but the one outside the Kingfisher Centre was closed because it wasn't doing so well. I wonder why.

I think I might also have been in Bielefeld.

Chewing gum contains latex. No, really, it does!

Kinky!

Chewing gum also contains pulverised limestone. Chewing gum factories were quite a good customer for the chalk quarry I visited years ago.

The year 2008 will last one more second than a regular leap year.

Why is that?

It's explained there:

http://www.computus.org/journal/?p=69

"[UTC] is linked to another timescale called TAI-UT1. This is the timescale that measures the actual rotation of the earth. The problem with synchronising a rigid timescale like UTC to a dynamic one like UT1 is that the earth suffers from the same problem as the AS3 Timer class - it's not very accurate.

The concept of leap days are familiar to most of us. Every four years (on the whole) an extra day is inserted into the end of February. These intercalary days, as they are known, keep the modern Gregorian calendar in sync with the orbit of the earth around the sun. The same principle is applied to the movement of the earth and UTC. The two are kept in sync by the addition or removal of leap seconds from UTC."

They couldn´t just have set up some large booster rockets and slowed down the Earth´s rotation one second instead?

Too expensive... however, if everyone reading this will shift in their seats one "cheek" to the right at the count of 3, that should do it.


ONE....


TWO....


THREE!!


There, did you feel that?

I certainly did!

<>

By amazing coincidence my old LRP character, Skullsplitter McUen, was often the cause of other PCs needing to be healed. Maybe not ninety times a day, but it probably felt like that for the healers.

I just got strikedown! *does the happy dance of zombie bowling*

Fly swats can be used to swat other insects and arachnids.

Now, see? That seems like very useful information (and commonly known).

Here, more like this.

There is a 33 ft tall office chair in Anniston, Alabama. It's the world's tallest one.

Are there taller, non-office chairs elsewhere then?

RF

The world's tallest rocking chair is just a bit smaller at 12 7/8ths feet (3.91 m). But the world's tallest chair is in Italy is 65.6 feet (20 m).