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

Crossing crocodiles (bird-like) and turtles (mammal-like) would be a little likelier to work.

Crocotles, turtodiles?

Tortogators.

That is more euphonious.

I just learned something new.

German Chocolate Cake did not originate in Germany, but right here in Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_chocolate_cake

I had never heard of 'German Cake'. It looks as though it is a variation of Black Forest Gateau.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest_cake

Perhaps as good Europeans, we are less likely to eat American cakes.

PP.

Needless nationalism. (Or continentalism, if you prefer.)

You're getting to be as bad as Americans are.

It's probably just a case of cake not travelling well.

Having looked at that description of the "German cake" (named after someone called Sam German), I am intrigued by the "caramel topping". Sounds deliciously sinful.

That reminds me. Ever since writing my entry on German Bread in December 2000, I meant to follow it up with one on German cakes (as in cakes made in Germany) Maybe when I retire.

It is quite delicious. I loved German('s) chocolate cake when I was younger. I demanded either that, or Boston cream pie for my birthdays, (until I became accustomed to being disappointed on my Christmas adjacent birthday).

My father hated when I requested German chocolate cake because he was fed GCC until, as he said, "it came out of my ears" when he was a kid. Apparently, it really was all the rage in the '50's in Texas. His mother and all his aunts would make it for every occasion.

From Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Earth’s South Magnetic Pole is actually in the North. That’s why the North tip of a compass needle points there."

...wa'll, jest so long as they don't make no mistakes on the polarity of the charged particles attracted thair...

The ejaculation of a drone bee is so powerfully explosive as to sometimes be audible to the human ear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_%28bee%29#Mating_and_the_drone_reproductive_organ

(This post has been hugely edited due to it's tasteless nature and my desire to avoid pre-moderation)

(But it did suggest that drone bees might hear bedroom events in my house).

PP.

Nimrod is commonly used as an epithet indicating someone of minimal mental acuity, an idiot as it were.

This connotation came about because of a certain "Wascally Wabbit". In a classic Looney Tunes cartoon, Bugs Bunny calls Elmer Fudd "Nimrod" as a means of sarcastically belittling his hunting skills. Nimrod was a biblical character known as great hunter. Since many viewers, especially later generations did not get the joke (myself included), the term nimrod has changed its commonly understood meaning.

Another pejoritive epithet of the character is 'Turkey', 'you Turkey' or 'you Little Turkey'.

Chief Little Turkey was a colonial era Cherokee indian chief, notable for a nasty habit of selling land that didn't belong to him to the colonials, on a principle that the martial contests that inevitably followed would weaken not only the colonials, but also his internecine rivals within the tribe.

So the epithet originally had the same sense as calling someone a 'Benedict Arnold' or a 'Quisling', a point all but forgotten as the memory of Chief Little Turkey fades into history.

ITI, I believe you made that up.

However, a totally useless fact is that I had a four-times-great-uncle (if I've counted right) whose first name was Nimrod.

I think his middle name was Washington...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Turkey

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_Chiefs_of_the_Cherokee




The Tower of Babel, according Genesis, first constructed by Nimrod, was demolished by Xerxes, after his victory at Thermopylae and defeat at Salamis, when he was compelled by a rebellion in the Kingdom of Babel, squarely astride his supply lines, to withdraw from his effort to conquer Greece.

The inhabitants of Babylon had fortified the tower and taken refuge there.

Xerxes destroyed it by undermining its foundations with tunnels and diverting the entire flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through the tunnels.

Some corner stumps showing unmistakable flood damage still remain.

Babylon was a favorite place of exile for Greeks under the Ostracon, and it possible some of them may have helped foment the rebellion.

In the aftermath, Xerxes completely depopulated the city of Babylon, selling the survivors into slavery elsewhere in the Persian empire and repopulated it in the same manner since he still needed a city there to support internal trade within the Persian empire.

In the aftermath of his defeat at Salamis, Xerxes put a price of two talents on Themistocles.

Themistocles, meanwhile had been voted the Ostracon by the city of Athens.

Themistocles disguised himself and arranged an audience with Xerxes.

Xerxes postponed a decision on the matter till the following day, then had Themistocles brought before him, advising him that it appeared Xerxes owed Themistocles two talents.

His defection having been accepted, Themistocles spent remainder of his days in the service of the Persian empire.