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

Is it not spelled Brodie?

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a book

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a film


How's that, Pedro?
(but that was useful - does it belong here? )

That's okay, Rod. Unless one of my 3 local libraries has it in translation to one language or another, it is certainly useless to me for a very long time, at least. I hope useless to one person allows an exception and there will be no flogging for the reckless post.

Historic trivia of little current relevance on homeopathic medicines: while one might easily get the impression that homeopathic medicines might be prepared by means of waving the stopper from the bottle of active ingredients over the top of a stoppered bottle of distilled water and declaring the latter 'homeopathic' for whatever was in the first bottle, there are exceptions.

During the prohibition era in the USA, taking advantage of a loophole in the law allowing alcohol for medicinal purposes, solutions of 10% grain alcohol with homeopathic labeling were a commonplace device for supplying alcohol to the consuming public.

If you made a scale model solar system (orrery) such that the average distance from the Earth to the Sun (1AU) is one inch, one light year (5.88 trillion miles) would be exactly* one mile.

(* at least to two decimal places).

(Source: http://t.co/s6lGJUHk )

Might be when seen from the US. I´m European, so I know the universe is metric.

Yea... It just doesn't seem as strangely serendipitous in metric.

"If you made a scale model solar system (orrery) such that the average distance from the Earth to the Sun (1AU) is 25.4 millimeters, one light year (9.45 trillion kilometers) would be exactly* 1.61 kilometers."

Ah, Bad Astronomer obliged with a metric one today. If 1AU is scaled down to 1 cm, the Earth would be the size of a bacterium.

A good bacterium or one of them nasty ones?

Course, even bacteria come in all shapes and sizes,
long wiggly ones, fat round ones, big spongy ones,
but that's just relative to each other I suppose.
Just like on Earth. And in cyberspace.

~jwf~

The Copenhagen airport is shaped like a paper airplane.

http://static.themetapicture.com/media/funny-building-shaped-like-paper-plane.jpg

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?q=copenhagen+airport&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=faC&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1360&bih=667&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=vOp11q_azWuqjM:&imgrefurl=http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1392980&docid=oUm8WU7GRskUHM&imgurl=http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/1392980.jpg&w=500&h=318&ei=8qzjT-r5Gq-viQeN7eiYDw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=637&sig=102079354883716751087&page=3&tbnh=123&tbnw=193&start=37&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:13,s:37,i:234&tx=97&ty=82
I found it here when the other link would not work

Thank you, Vestboy.


I've read about the bowhead whale twice this week. A few of them may be the oldest living mammals currently in the world at an estimated 210 years. It is conceivable to think that a couple of these creatures remember when whaling ships plied the seas unrestricted. Some may even show the scars of being "the one who got away".

The rating scale on IMDb goes to 11 for "This Is Spinal Tap".

Ah, the useless leading the useless then eh wot.


~jwf~

In 1976, while working at Atari developing the arcade game "Breakout", Steve Jobs brought in from HP Steve Wosniak to do the game's design.

And they took the lessons they learned from making a style-over-function box that was impossible to upgrade and applied that to all Apple products...

That's true, Mr D
-Too blerry true to be funny, fords

Hence the Rod

Noted, fords.