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Better have another look at your biology textbook.

The common cold is so hard to eradicate precisely because it mutates (evolves) all the time. Each cold you get is another variant, some from the hundreds that have been around a long time, others that appear via mutation.

http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/virus/page.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311854,00.html
http://www.scienceclarified.com/Ti-Vi/Virus.html ...and more...

Yes, matter and energy change forms. Matter can become energy and energy can become matter. It's all just different forms of the same thing. You can read more in E=mc^2 explained.

every multi-lingual person on the planet hates English. It's a pain in the ass to learn because there are too many exceptions to the rules or the rules aren't well defined.

You forget to mention the completely irregular pronunciation:

• 'Though' and 'tough' don't rhyme.
• The 'o' in 'women' is not pronounced as one.
• The pronunciation of 'lead' depends on whether it's a verb or a noun.

These are my favorites. Here is a web page with more of them: http://www.worsleyschool.net/socialarts/strange/strange.html

When did they start describing buildings by weight?

Pretty much since we started doing the calculations. The Empire State Building, Sears Tower ( now Willis Tower) and the CN Tower (ok, not a true building in the strictest sense) all have weight measurements.

Because those are certainly some heavy buildings.

Considering the Empire State Building weighs 730,000,000 pounds, those are small buildings.

And yes, I get the whoosh.

Take a june bug, large and green...tie a string to it's leg and let him fly in circles. At the point where he starts to BLUR, that must be the speed of light. Figure the scale based on RPMs, etc the usual way.

SO: Speed of light: 34 mph!

Seriously: this standard stood for something like 700 years. Science: imperfect.

Wikipedia: Speed of light, history

Physics.virginua.edu: Speed of light

Worsleyschool: Measuring the speed of light

Early, scientific attempts to measure speed of light were very... Well... scientific. And quite accurate. In 1021 an Iraqi physicist realized that light has finite, variable speed that is slower in denser bodies.

In 1629-1667 there were several tries to measure how long it takes for light to move two miles. They all however got to the conclusion that it couldn't be measured because light's speed was so high and human reaction speed could not keep up

In late 1600s astronomers tried to find out the speed of light by observing the moons of Jupiter. They finally got pretty close to the actual value.

Rules of games aren't copyrightable (well the actual text of the rules are, but not the rules themselves),

Exactly. I mention the rules because they contribute to the trademark infringment. Because the rules of scrabulous are identical, that contributes to the Scrabulous' ability to confuse people into thinking they are playing Scrabble. (because lets face it... they are playing scrabble.)

but they are patentable. I believe Scrabble had been patented (like Monopoly) but the patent has long since expired.

Yes. They are suing based on copyright and trademark, not patents.

IANAL, and I don't use Scrabulous, so I can't say if they are infringing on board layout or some other copyrightable effect.

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=15619

Tell me that picture isn't immediately recognizable as a scrabble board. Same color scheme. Same grid positions. Everything.

If this:

http://www.worsleyschool.net/socialarts/mon/mondrian.html

can be protected art. Then so can the scrabble board.

They probably have a good case on trademark though,

Definitely. Not only is there the name similiarity, but the look of the scrabble board is part of the 'trade dress' of the Scrabble trademark. Everything about scrabulous is designed to mimic scrabble exactly.

Scrabulous is pretty close to Scrabble. I don't think I can get away with a car company called Generalized Motors.

At least not if you sell cars; especially ones that from 6 ft away are virtually indistinguishable from GM cars.

Grasshopper mice are known to howl and hunt for meat. They are the wolves of the mouse world.