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

Can't see him leaving them back this month.

With interest, the library fine could now be approaching the value of the US national debt. I suggest they find those books, and quickly!

The fines, adjusted for inflation only amount to $300,000 (£195,000).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8627835.stm

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no but the glass stays magically sharp

There is self cleaning glass (I doubt they used it on that pyramid though). Basically it has a titanium dioxide coating that leaves a nearly perfectly smooth surface on the glass making it hydrophilic. We think of glass as being smooth, but it's not when viewed microscopically. Also the coating is photocatalytic breaking down organic matter under ultraviolet light.

Wait a minute, I understood that

Unfortunately, it was Useful so we should disregard it.

Since when has anything scientific been useful?

Like washing detergent has hygrophobic and hydrophilic ends. When am I ever going to use that? Well, except for the exam.

Sorry, that is DEFINITELY useful. There's an EG entry for it. A283259

But it's only a third of the page

The word "orange" comes originally from a Sanskrit word for the orange tree. The fruit was not named after the color.

The original word for the color in the (old) English speaking world was basically "yellow-red" (geoluhread).



Unrelated useless fact. Malcolm X's killer was paroled yesterday "at the intersection of West 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard."

For the second (yes, 2nd) time, my car beeped at me all the way on that 4min37sec drive home.


Indian takeaway for four on the front passenger seat.

The American Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist! No, really, it was!

Now that is right up there with the Bank of England being founded by a Scotsman

Or (something else I just learned) that an Englishman invented kilts for the Scottish. *



*full disclosure, I wear a kilt occasionally.

That is indeed true - did you get that off my Guide entry about tartan?

....




http://www.cracked.com/article_18510_6-supposedly-ancient-traditions-that-totally-arent.html

Useless but slightly funny fact:

My daughter, probably aged about 5 at the time, was looking at an orange, and asked "Why is it called an orange?"

Perhaps, on reflection, rather inaccurately, we said "Because it's orange!"

To which she replied, "Then why isn't a banana called a yellow?"

In French, the fact that the colour is named after the fruit has consequences on spelling (notably, do you put a plural mark on the adjective -- "des chapeaux oranges" or "des chapeaux orange"). It probably works with 'marron' as well, and I don't really know the answer.

Words like orange, apron, apricot and umpire are examples of metanalysis, where the first letter of a word shifts to the end of the preceding word. A norange became an orange, for example.

Orange comes from the Arabic naranj, btw.