Smorgasbord

In an effort to amuse and entertain, today I bring you a smorgasbord of information.

First let me say I am so thankful for online dictionaries. They make it so much easier to guess at a word such as smorgasbord and find out the real spelling. I always thought it was stupid how to look it up in a regular dictionary you had to know how to spell it first. Did you know how to spell berserk? I didn't, not until I looked up crazy in the online Thesaurus.

Speaking of fun online, here’s a piece of trivia for you, brought to you by Scientific American.

Q. What is parthenogenesis?
A. Parthenogenesis is the development of offspring from an unfertilized egg. It is known to occur in animals such as fleas, lizards and turkeys.

That’s kind of freaky to me—don’t know about you. Spontaneous cloning, sounds like. It makes me think of Jurassic Park and psychotic turkeys running around attacking people.

So today,(since I finished two big projects yesterday and now have nothing to do. . . can you tell?)I decided to make it mystery day, or puzzle day, or internet awareness day, depending on how you look at it. I have several mysteries that have been bothering me and it was high time I figured them out.

First, lately I kept seeing news headlines online and on newspapers about Knight Ridder--how they’re selling Knight Ridder, how the business market all depends on Knight Ridder. And I just had become very confused. Were people getting this excited over an old TV show that they forgot how to spell? Were they making a movie? How out of touch with reality were these people to think it would be that big of a deal? Finally I went to Wikipedia and checked it out (I am now a huge fan of this site. So many embedded links you could play around all day from just one entry!). Anyway, so turns out it’s not that people are confused and can’t spell. Knight Ridder is the name of this big publishing company that owns about 20 newspapers nationwide. They’ve been going through financial problems and so they’re getting bought up or something. Knight Rider, the 80s TV show starring David Hasselhoff, is probably only occasionally seen on TV Land on Sunday afternoons. (I looked it up and can’t even find a TV listing for it—-maybe it’s permanently off the air. . . not that’s I’d be so sad—I never watched it.) Is anyone else immensely relieved to not have to puzzle over that one any longer?

And speaking of shows that are no longer on the air, look what I stumbled across:


MOST MISSED TV SERIES

1. Star Trek
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
3. Friends
4. Fawlty Towers
5. Blake's 7
6. The X-Files
7. Babylon 5
8. Stargate*
9. Seinfeld
10. The A-Team
* Stargate is still in production. Source: Home Media Networks

Funny how just yesterday my sister and I were commenting how we wish Star Trek: The Next Generation was still on, and even a random person who came across this blog would know I love Buffy (not the character, the show—in fact, Buffy herself is one of my least favorite characters (this may or may not have to do with my Mean People Rule*)), and for several years I based my life around the 6:00 and 10:00 episodes of Friends. So there you have it: Statistics indicate that I am overwhelmingly average in my TV-watching tastes.

(By the way, all this info is from a BBC article.)

*The Mean People Rule is a rule I conveniently abide by and at other times disregard. It is the rule that says mean people should not be rewarded. If I find out someone is mean (I had heard, you see, from my big important Hollywood sources that Sarah Michelle Gellar was “difficult” and “demanding”), I have a hard time enjoying their work, even if they are talented in addition to being mean. The point of the rule is that I don’t want to help their career by buying their stuff or promoting their work, because I don’t think mean people should get ahead in this world. They’re using the world and the people in it completely selfishly, and they shouldn’t be able to feed on the rest of us who actually try to make the world a better place. However, I don’t always stick to this rule. The most glaring exception so far is Eminem—I did go to his concert this summer, thus benefiting him financially and furthering his career (as opposed to listening on the radio, which really doesn’t do much for him monetarily). But! I can always use the excuse that it was on a date so it didn’t count.

The other mystery that had been bothering me was this flag that I see every morning flying alongside the U.S. flag as I go to work. A lot of buildings fly it, not just one, and ever since I started working downtown I had wanted to find out what this one flag is. It’s white with a light blue stripe on the top and the bottom, and red 6-pointed stars across the middle. I knew the Israeli flag had light blue stripes, and so I thought maybe that was it. But no, the Israeli flag has a blue star of David on it.

Every day I would say to myself, “I’ve gotta find out what that flag is,” but then when I got in to work, I’d forget. Well, today I remembered! And after much searching, I discovered that it is (duh) the Chicago flag. Yes, apparently Chicago has a flag. Australian aborigines have a flag. Your mom has a flag, or can make one. So, yet another mystery solved. Here are some fun flag links if you’re bored.

http://www.flags.net/search.php
http://crwflags.com/fotw/flags/g(worl.html

I haven't resolved the final mystery for today, but I'll get right on it. Next time I will have the answer to: Who invented the first revolving door and in what country? Was it for climate needs? (Today I saw a custodian cleaning a revolving door and it was funny. Go in, mop, mop, mop, all the way around, and come back in on the same side. Like how a little kid would play in it the first time he saw one.)

I need an ending thingy. You know, like a "Thank you for watching and as always, keep the faith" or "Goodbye, neighbor" type sign-off. But until I think of one. . . bye.