Weekend Open Thread

Claw:

We have ran into folks who had no idea what those oysters were….

Yes, we tried them. We also tried Balut….

Buy ‘em by the bagful…

Green Thumb,
Phildo should get a summer condo in Myrtle Beach.
He’ll be in good company.
(See 3 new entries below).

Hope you are feeling better, Graybeard!

That nasty cold has also hit our home as well.

We are blessed that we have the freedom to worship, while others have to go in hiding to fellowship with one another.

… you may have a thaumatrope? If you do, you have something really cool – a disc with a different picture on each side, and when the disc is rotated quickly, it appears to combine the two images into a single image. Thaumatropes have been around a while, too, having been invented in 1824 by John Ayrton Paris (1785-1826). (That’s one of those items you know has to have a name, but you don’t know what the name is.)

… a town in the United States is entirely surrounded by Canada? The town of Point Roberts, Washington, at the southernmost tip of Canada’s Tsawwassen Peninsula, is surrounded by Canadian territory. Because it only has an elementary school for its 1,191 residents, middle and high school students have to be bused over 40 miles to the rest of Whatcom County over the single bridge connecting it with the mainland. That means students cross international boundaries four times a day every day. The town became “stranded” from the rest of the United States when the 49th parallel was agreed upon as the boundary between it and Canada. The southernmost tip of the island falls below the 49th parallel. Discussions have been held off and on over the years to cede the town to Canada, but nothing has come of them. (Did anyone ask the residents which country they’d rather be part of? I doubt it.)

… the average housewife gets a lot of exercise? Researchers say that in the course of her daily routine of chores, the average housewife walks an estimated ten miles a day around the house. (What, you doubt the figures? Get a pedometer and check it out yourself!)

… an actual debate is ongoing about whether the Frankenstein monster qualifies as a zombie? One side of the debate claims that, because a zombie can be defined as a reanimated corpse, the monster in the book and movie Frankenstein qualifies, since it was created out of parts of dead human bodies. It does not matter how the reanimation occurs, this side opines, as long as it happens. The other side, however, says that to become a zombie, a corpse must be reanimated either by a virus or by radiation, and it must hunger for human flesh. (Then there’s the third school of thought, which reminds us that all of this stuff is fictional anyway and really doesn’t matter.)

… the man for whom the guillotine was named had nothing to do with its invention? Developed in France in the late 18th Century, the device was named after Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), who did nothing more than propose its use to the French government as a humane method of execution. Dr. Guillotin was actually an opponent of the death penalty, and after the machine – originally called a “louisette” after King Louis XVI (1754-1793) – gained infamy during the French Revolution, the doctor protested its use and the fact that his name was attached to it. (I would protest too!)

Interesting indeed. A couple things I wonder is, how did they camouflage or hide a large ship and how many coconut trees did it take to make it stay afloat, even if it only lasted for awhile.