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

A pair of queens are also known as four s.


For these and other hand names see http://www.thepokerforum.com/handnames.htm

The singular of Inuit is Inuk.

(Jusr read this in the Radio Times (UK)

Under normal circumstances the brain is the organ which 'dies' last. The only execption to this is in pregnant women where the body's natural recation is to preserve the foetus rather than itself and thus the brain dies first.

Since clinical "death" is normally determined by "brain death", almost every form of dying can, in some way, be attributed to "lack of oxygen to the brain"...

Drowning - lack of oxygen to the brain. (directly)
Heart attack - lack of oxygen to the brain. (heart stops pumping oxygenated blood to the brain)
Total organ failure - lack of oxygen to the brain. (eventually same as above).
Beheading - lack of oxygen to the brain. (definitely no oxygenated blood getting to brain)
Jumping from skyscraper - lack of oxygen to the brain. (even if skull cracked open, no oxygenated blood is getting to the brain cells)


It's pedantic, but true.

2,ooo keys are lost in the UK every month.

their is 6 million euros in "forgotten money" ,eg behind the sofa.

<>

Locksmithing is definitely the game to be in, then...

While the European rabbit took 900 years to colonize Britain, in just 50 years it over-ran an area of Australia more than half the size of Europe. With adult rabbits producing upto 40 young per year, rabbits pushed the front line of assault across the continent at5 a rate of up to 100 km/year. A report from the Bureau of Rural Sciences (BRS) states, "Ir was he fastest growth of any colonising mammal anywhere in the world"

(From 'Awake' magazine (Jehovah's Witnesses) 08/02/05)

During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" only sold about 3,000 copies

In New York every year about 311 people are bitten by rats. However, 1519 people are bitten by other people.

Have you ever filled a series of glasses with different levels of water to make different tones? This musical instrument is known as a hydrodaktulopsychicarmonica.

"During an average person's lifetime you will swallow 8 spiders in your sleep" was a "factoid" made up to test how much people will believe if they read it in an email/on the internet. So is the "a duck's quack has no echo, and nobody knows why". Both complete garbage.

RF

Water flowing through a completely smooth pipe is more turbulent than water flowing though a pipe that has a rough surface. The obsturctions in the rough pipe prevent eddies from forming, rather than encouraging them to form

Uhuh, and IIRC shark skin is very rough for the same reason.

>> prevent eddies from forming, rather than encouraging them to form <<

Eddies in the time/space continuum. Apparently.

RF

I didn't know sharks participated on Internet Relay Chat...

B

And those book covers that are very slightly rough feel really smooth because your skin slides over them, while smooth glass feels sticky because due to suction and the moisture in your skin, your skin sticks to it.

Can't remember if I've already posted this, but what the Hell...

In either the 40's or 50's a shark was eviscerated (don'tcha just love that word?!) and left to it's own devices. Now, most sharks need to keep moving at all times otherwise their gills don't work so the shark was kept in a donut shaped tank so it could just swim around and around and around and around... every so often as it went round the shark spied a chunk of meat (it's own digestive system to be precise) and it would think "Oho! Snack time!" and chow down on the lovely meal which woul fall out of the slit in it's belly. Then it would go round again, see a chunk of meat, think "Oho! Snack time!", and so on... apparently the shark survived for quite a while before eventually dying of starvation.

Who's Eddie?

>>The only execption to this is in pregnant women where the body's natural recation is to preserve the foetus rather than itself and thus the brain dies first.

I question this. In most mammals, the body's instinct is to abandon the baby and save the mother. Because the baby is just one baby, while the mother may go on to produce many more babies if she survives. To maximise survival of offspring to reproduction age, which is what natural selection is all about, it is better that the mother survives.

Hmmm...sounds Urban Mythy to me.

B