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Oh, I found a link about Einstein's glial cells.

As for Einstein's brilliance. I think he truly was an intuitive genius having published five ground breaking papers in 1905 and devising SR and GR. Not to mention making an important argument in QM in the form of the EPR paradox which led John Bell to try to prove Einstein right though Bell ended up showing that QM is weird after all. He did however lack some advanced mathematical skills otherwise he wouldn't have required having mathematical assistants throughout his career.

From Cecil Adams,

There are certain items you can wear to tip people off to your sexual preference, but for the most part they're only useful if you're gay. For instance, there was (or there was at one time) an almost comically elaborate handkerchief code, which you used to find printed up and posted in gay hangouts and sex shops.

Hanky in the left back pocket signified a dominant, the right pocket a submissive. Yellow means you're into water sports (get it?), red means fisting, green means you expect payment, and so on. Keys and at one time earrings serve(d) a similar purpose. I'm told that in L.A. if you show up with a teddy bear it means you want to be cuddled. To each his own.

For informational purposes only, please

George

I wonder how long they can go before people really start to revolt. And I don't just mean flaunting your copies of "For Whom The Bell Tolls (Live)" on Napster.

Nobody really knows what the hell "SPAM" stands for anyway.

SPiced hAM

Source: http://www.straightdope.com/classi cs/a5_229.html

No plot. No story. You should just hate that.

What about Bambi?

I don't know.

How about Toy Story?

Toy Story is NOT Disney.

How about The Lion King?

Lying King is a blatant rip-off of Kimba, The White Lion, a long-running animated Japanese television show from the 1960s. Read the comparisons here

Disney hasn't done anything original in decades. Their contribution to the success of anime in the US is much the same as Window's contribution to the success of Linux.

--

Again, Cecil Adams comes through -- this Straight Dope article discusses the legendary Vatican porn library.

See this Straight Dope article for more info on numbers stations -- Cecil seems to be of the opinion that they're more the CIA's bailiwick, and he knows everything, so he must be right.

It sure beats 42 balloons and a lawn chair.

For the last time, we're "'Merkins", as in the pubic hair wigs worn by syphilitic noblemen.

Parts like wheels and axles just aren't biologically possible.

Well, maybe -- this Straight Dope column discusses this very topic.

Good luck everybody. Cecil Adams has a column on this citing ex-CIA guys, and OTPs are unbreakable. Go read the column and be enlightened!

So does this mean that a site that provided blind people an audio translation of other web sites would be in violation of copyright, as defined by the harrassers of Dialectizer? Wouldn't this conflict with the accessibility provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act? The Department of Housing and Urban Development reportedly once paid to translate a pamphlet into what it considered a Haitian creole ("Yuh as a rezedent, ave di rights ahn di rispansabilities to elp mek yuh HUD-asisted owzing ah behta owme fi yuh ahn yuh famibly.") Isn't the Dialectizer essentially providing the same sort of service?

Hitler was beaten regularly by his Jewish father.

God, I hope you are kidding. Hitler's father wasn't Jewish. There may be _some_ Jewish blood in his family , but even that can't be tracked down with any degree of certainity.

And no amount of excuses can excuse him for making the conscious decision to make Jews the scape goat for WWI and perscute them to death, literally. He was a very careful man when it came to politics, at least after the beer hall rebellion which landed him in jail.

The reasons behind that can take up books (they do,in fact), so I won't go into it here.

There was a recent StraightDope column about perverted statistical anomalies used to bolster a media spin political position, Does violence against women rise 40% during the Super Bowl?

There was a recent StraightDope column about perverted statistical anomalies used to bolster a media spin political position, Does violence against women rise 40% during the Super Bowl?

Actually, you can't use the business-reply card as a label, according to rule 917.243(b) in the Domestic Mail Manual, as detailed in this Straight Dope column.

Of course, you can send back a business-reply envelope with nothing (or a blank form) inside -- the USPS isn't going to bother checking those.

SDSTAFF David replies:

It's pretty certain, assuming by "one common primate ancestor" you don't actually mean a single individual. A single group or species, yes.

While evolution can produce similar results among differing species (for example, birds, insects, and bats, all of which evolved wings independently), it doesn't converge two different species into one. To put it more precisely, two species can't merge so completely that they appear, even through DNA tests, to be a single species.

The DNA tests are key. In all the tests performed on people since DNA testing started, nobody has ever noticed that some results were completely different from others to the point of being a separate species. It's considered highly unlikely, to say the least.

Lawyer: Look, if you formed a band and recorded your own version of Dark Side of the Moon, track for track, do you think that's legitimate unles you get permission?

Bad example, I think.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've paid them a lot of money last year.

You don't need anyone's permission to record a cover of a song, the illustrious Cecil Adams sets you straight on this one, all you have to do is notify the copyright's owner and pay a standard royalty.

And what is an album, but a collection of songs? You may need to change the title, however, perhaps Dark Thighs of the Moon?

Also, the complete Dark Side of the Moon album has been played in concert by groups that were not Pink Floyd, the cover band Phish famously (and a pretty good copy too, I have it) and well as countless Pink Floyd cover bands I imagine.

George

Straight Dope on space with no suit

Or that the hook wasn't that heavy.

Doesn't matter. Momentum is mass times velocity. If Robbins impacted with that spacecraft at 32 m/s, the hook was traveling faster than that, maybe twice that. She wouldn't move back too fast--maybe 5, 10 m/s--but it would have made a difference giving the circumstances.

Er, no. Judging from the Soyuz 11 case, vacuum exposure doesn't do that sort of damage (lack of air will kill in a few minutes, of course, but without gory SFX).
/.

check out do identical twins have... and why do identical twins... . They both say that the DNA of identical twins is notexactly the same due to slight changes caused by environmental influences (already starting before birth). Probably it hasn't always been easy to tell the difference between two pieces of DNA that similar. I wonder though - the articles seem to suggest that even the DNA of a clone could be slightly different from the DNA of the being the DNA for the cloning was taken from. Does this mean we might eventually find ways to change one's DNA enough to avoid identification with DNA-samples taken say a few years back, for instance through the influence of viruses that cut little DNA bits and insert them somewhere else...

Take a look at this link at the straight dope. I think that Telsa is romanticized by many people who want another unsung hero.

Try here.

BTW, our discussion is using the rule that to be a number zero must represent a quantity (which in dates it does not, it simply holds a place).


Munky_v2
"Warning: you are logged into reality as root..."

For a discussion about zero (and a different conclusion than yours!), follow this link

CNN is owned by TimeWarner.

TimeWarner is merging with AOL.

AOL is populated by martians. Surely we won't admit they're regular Merkins like the rest of us, right? Ok, maybe they're merkins, but surely not Americans? C'mon people, back me up on this....

I'm guessing they're trying to get some nostalgia clicks from martian AOLers pining for the motherland.

According to The Straight Dope, they use two chemicals, luciferin & luciferase, stored in separate, concentric tubes. Bending the tube breaks the inner tube, releasing its contents to mix with those of the outer tube.

If I remember correctly, luciferin & luciferase are the same chemicals fireflies use to produce their light.

Straight Dope: Are deadly germs the latest terrorist weapon?

Cecil Adams is, of course, the world's smartest human and the author of the weelky column The Straight Dope.

Cecil Adams is, of course, the world's smartest human and the author of the weelky column The Straight Dope.

Cecil Adams is, of course, the world's smartest human and the author of the weelky column The Straight Dope.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Marissa

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Marissa

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Marissa

So, feeding the musical notes into a generation program and producing Das Cantenwerks would be legal, what if I did the same thing with some random Backstreet Boys song? They are 90% synthesized anyways. I bet I could recreate it in in minutes, sythesize the voices of me and/or a few of my friends and voila! My very own copy of some new crap pop music song. Is it legal for me to have that? Destribute it? Sell it? Should it be? Would it become so if the BS Boys died?

It almost certainly would be legal. See this Straight Dope column for details on recording other people's songs. Basically once a song's been recorded, anyone else can record it with or without permission.

And of course Disney's crowning failure came at the very end of his life. The attendant physicians misunderstood his last request, and (alas) instead of preserving his magnificant brain, we now have "Disney on Ice!"

Disney was fried, not frozen -- this is one of many urban legends surrounding Disney and his creations.

The Straight Dope explains Braille on ATM's

What would happen if a competeing group decided to perform and record a whole bunch of Phish tunes on an album? Would they be able to?

Yes, a competing group can record any Phish tune they want, after paying the required royalties.

From Cecil Adam's Straight Dope about Micheal Jackson and the Beatles.

Another thing the publisher can't do (in the U.S. at least) is prevent somebody from recording a cover version of a song the publisher owns. Usually the would-be cover artist and the publisher work out a deal on royalties. However, if negotiations fail, U.S. law allows the cover artist to make and market the recording anyway provided he pays a stipulated (and fairly stiff) royalty to the publisher.

Would the Dead Kennedys be able to produce a sharply modified Phish satire album?

If the Dead Kennedy's were still around, I'm sure they could, you just described Weird Al's career.

Not that anybody would want to listen to yet another band similar to Phish, but the whole myth of "open source" and Phish is, umm, a myth.

You're not thinking of it in the right way. It's not Open Source as in you get the lyrics and tabs, and can recreate the songs anyway you want to, and call it Phish, it's Open Source as in you can freely trade the live recordings. Maybe GPL music is closer to the true meaning.

Many bands do not allow audience taping, and attempt to prosecute people trading unauthorized recordings. This may be due to record company pressure, but the idea is "Only we can determine what music of ours you can listen to, if we haven't gone over the music and approved it, you aren't supposed to listen to it."

Phish (and more originally, though not the first, the Grateful Dead) feel that the fans should be free to tape a live concert, and once they are done playing a concert live, the fans are free to trade these live concerts for other live concerts, as long as no profit is involved. Perhaps a better way to describe this is as "Open Source distribution."

Yes, "Open Source distribution". If I don't like the quality of a CDR I get from MZ, I'm free to look for a CDR from TB, JT, or AJ, and never deal with MZ again. If I want to accumulate 400 hours of live Dead without paying a cent to the Grateful Dead organization (or 400 hours of Phish to the Phish organization), I'm free to do so.

I hope this helps,

George

Possibility number three (you may want to sit down for this) is as follows. For reasons that I confess are not entirely clear to me, when a black hole grows to enormous mass, it becomes less dense.

If our entire galaxy collapsed into an ebony aperture (I am getting tired of typing black hole), said BH would be about ten billion light years across, with the average density of a thin gas. If we take this to its logical conclusion, it is possible that the known universe is itself a black hole, with us living in it.

Wherefore, it seems to me, the obvious question is: how the hell do we get out of here? The casual attitude of our public officials toward this baleful possibility is nothing short of scandalous.

Fighting Ignorance since 1973!

You can get some info at The Straight Dope

Here's a quote from the site:

"They point out that (1) the research demonstrating the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard is sparse and methodologically suspect; (2) a sizable body of work suggests that in fact the Dvorak offers little practical advantage over the QWERTY; (3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands; and (4) the QWERTY keyboard did not become a standard overnight but beat out several competing keyboards over a period of years. Thus it may be fairly said to represent the considered choice of the marketplace"

It seems to me like many people switch to Dvorak because it has a high "nerd factor" instead of it being a Good Idea (tm). Kind of like why many people switch to the current Unix of the month.

Are idiots?



learn about how Fahrenheit was developed:
http://www.straightdope.com/class ics/a891215.html.



BTW. Celsius conversion are FAR easier the Fahrenheit.
1 calorie will heat 1 cubic centimeter of water by 1 degree celsius.

Can you do the same in Imperial?

Furthermore, water being a fairly important component of all life here on earth, using it as the accepted scale is highly logical.
It makes a kind of intuitive sense that as the temperature drops in the wintertime, water starts to go solid around 0.

Furthermore, the fact that 100 is around human body temperature is pure coincidence. The scale was expanded (see article above) only to get rid of fractions.

Lazy imperial system people are forgetting that a decimal based system can handle decimal degrees just fine. If you want more accuracy, throw some extra numbers behind the decimal point.

Are idiots?

learn about how Fahrenheit was developed:
http://www.straightdope.com/class ics/a891215.html.

BTW. Celsius conversion are FAR easier the Fahrenheit. 1 calorie will heat 1 cubic centimeter of water by 1 degree celsius.
Can you do the same in Imperial?
Furthermore, water being a fairly important component of all life here on earth, using it as the accepted scale is highly logical. It makes a kind of intuitive sense that as the temperature drops in the wintertime, water starts to go solid around 0.
Furthermore, the fact that 100 is around human body temperature is pure coincidence. The scale was expanded (see article above) only to get rid of fractions.
Lazy imperial system people are forgetting that a decimal based system can handle decimal degrees just fine. If you want more accuracy, throw some extra numbers behind the decimal point.

I bet that a lot of people are going to run around in the streets like headless chickens, waiting for an apocalypse that doesn't happen (they don't even realize the Julian calendar is fundamentally screwed up, and 2000 isn't even 2000). The rest will have something that doesn't work (I already know my neat 4-head stereo VCR from 1992 won't handle Y2K, meaning I'll have to stop all my advance taping - oh, wait, in 7 years of owning it I have yet to tape anything - never mind!). There will be a few minor glitches, I'm sure - but I think for the most part the world will just keep on chugging along.

Me? I work for an insurance company, and I'm in charge of the desktop remediation. We've tested, and tested, and tested - and at this point every known element in our network is A-OK. I'm sure some user goofed up a spreadsheet date function or something, but we'll find out on Monday and deal with it then. The mainframe was fixes a year and a half ago. We already have a generator - it's tested, too. Ergo, I'm not worried.

Maybe I should go take some of those bets...

- -Josh Turiel

So far it looks like no one else has remembered but How Stuff Works beat out slashdot for "Cool Site of the Year" a few months ago. I took a look then, quite a collection of interesting info, almost as good as The Straight Dope but not quite.