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

Better see Mr Matthews about is Turkey farms then.

Speaking of astronauts, here's a little known 'fact'. There is a theoretical unit of measurement called a 'Garne' or 'Garnes unit" that indicates the severity of space sickness. It is named after US Representative cum astronaut Jake Garnes, who purportedly spent the majority of his mission in the airlock chundering at 18500 miles an hour.

This is a precis of the turkey farm article:

"An Australian gastroenterologist set the world of science fuming when he urged oeople to avoid flatulence-producing turkey and plum pudding at Christmas, to help save the ozone layer.

Quote" "Thewre has been no real measurement of emissions from humans as a contributor to the ozone problem. But it probably does, because it's the hydrogen and carbon dioxide and methane that you produce that can have an impact." The average [person "emitted a litre a day".

[A Greenpeace spokesman] said the real danger of ethane lies not with farting Australians but with bacterial digestive processes which have stored millions of tonnes of methane in frozen bogs under the tundra.. As the world warms these will be released in quantities that will boost global warming and add to ozone depletion.

[A spokesperson from the British Digestive Foundation] pointed out that methane was produced by a high-fibre diet and thus vegetarians cwere just as likely to add to the methane crisis. i.e. the average cow produces 500 litres of methane per day.

spokesperson from UEA said that methane doesn't destroy ozone; it increases the amount of ozone. So the more you fart - if you can get it up into the stratosphere - the better it is for the ozone layer. He calculated the Greenhouse Effect of extra farts over Christmas. If a billion people - i.e. the size of the Christian World - fart an extra 2 litres per day for 7 days over Christmas, that would produce one hundredth of a teragram of methane. A teragram is a million million grams.

"Present emissions are 500 teragrams, so we're talking about an increment of only one fifty-thousandth. The temperature effect of this would be about a hundred-thousandth of a degree Celcius. From a climate viewpoint, don't worry about farting. For the ozone layer, fart as much as you possibly can", the UEA spokesperson said.



Thought people might like to be reaasured on this with Christmas already on the horizon.

The author of *The Neverending Story* is in fact named Michael Ende.

Here's one I just looked up. Armand Hammer did NOT found the company that makes Arm & Hammer baking soda. Armand Hammer was apparently named after a character, Armand Duval, from Dumas' La Dame de Camelias. However his father was known for his radical left leanings and may have named him after the contemporary insignia of the Socialist Labor Party. Either way, Armand Hammer was the head of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation, one of the richest oil companies of the US. Armand Hammer was fond of the logo and painted such on his yacht. Apparently after wearying of explaining that he was neither a socialist or that he was the owner of Church & Dwight, the makers of Arm & Hammer baking soda, Armand Hammer attempted to buy the company. They refused to sell but did allow him to buy enough stock to sit on the board of directors. After he died in 1990 the company, Occidental, sold his stock. Apparently they didn't feel that word play made good business sense.

<<"Comment is free but facts are sacred" C.P.Snow (1926)(A907383)>>

Excellent!

How long is a piece of string? Twice the length of half of it...
(In a Dr Who episode the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) asked that question of some allegedly human astronauts to verify their identity. They were aliens of course. I nearly wet myself laughing at that...)

Hey Adelaide,

You should belong to the Random Quotes Guild (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A907382)

Ah! I see you do - from, A907382. Wonder why it didn't hyperlink?

According to William Poundstone in his book "Big Secrets" the "eleven herbs and spices" advertised to be in Original Recipe would seem to be flour, salt, pepper and MSG. That's all that was found by analysis of the premixed breading that was ... acquired from a KFC near Stanford University.

The mean shoulder height, measured from the floor to the bony tip of the shoulder (acromion), for Brazilian men is 1410mm (standard deviation 60mm). For French men it's 1405mm (sd 65mm) and for Japanese women, 1270.9mm (sd 45.7mm)

I've got lots more like this, by the way.

im ugly as sin


now you try put that fact to some use mua hgahaahaha

Himura tells little porky pies, methinks.



F

himura never lies

He's ugly as sin, but he pops them in, walking in a Dowie wonderland

(Old Crystal Palace song)

check my 'which is there more of in britain' thread

check it out

ET's face was based on that of Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein's god does not play dice with the universe.

I discovered today that the string used to suspend a conker, which is often an old bootlace or animal sinew is called a drangle. Strictly the drangle is measured from the conkerto first contact with the hand and does not include the bit within the conker, the knot at the end or the bit around the hand. There was some more info but I think I'll put that into the Conversation Forum for the EG Guide Entry on conkers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A657623.

Was it on this thread that s'body posted s'thing about Inuit vocabulary in the last day or so? Anyway, I would like to report that the word 'dranfgle' does not translate into Inuit; and neither are there any words for it in Orkney or Shetland, which are largely treeless.

Similarly....you ogten hear BBC weatherpersons, even the English ones, using the fine Scots words 'dreich' and 'haar' for which there are no English equivalents.

"The British climate is like living inside tupperware"