. I recently had the "Meat is muscle" epiphany as well. And I was fascinated by the lung thing. I always assumed it was a bag of sorts. How else can you puncture it? Keep writing stuff like this. This is the kind of thing that put Cockeyed on my daily list of tings to look at on the internet. Nothing figured out about sex? Very interesting, Rob. Thanks for the simple tips and trivia! I discovered that bok choi, choi sum, chinese cabbage, pak choi and many other asian vegies, are just the same damn vegetable! Also, that while learning french off multilingul food packaging is fun, no french dude is impressed that you can recite the 40 flavours of jelly bellies and knowing that vin rouge is red wine and vin blanc is white, is only helpful in 90% of situations. On a similiar vein. Portobello, Button, Field, BBQ and cup mushrooms are all the same damn mushroom. Just different ages! Don't even get me started on green onions! Anon isn't some dude who said a lot of wise things - it stands for Anonymous You should write a book. the one that made me feel silly is realizing dicing onions is a heck of alot easier if you leave the root end attached until the last cut I used to think websites could be either informative or entertaining, never both. Then I came across cockeyed.com and was dazzled. Hi Rob ! Don't forget another neat feature of candles - the wick burns down at about the same rate as the wax goes down. This is important - if the wick burnt too fast, the candle would go out very soon, and if the wick burned down too slow (or not at all), you'd be left with a burning string flopping over the side of the candle. All the best Gerald Higgins You cannot legally stick a feces covered plunger on any of your employee's face when they piss you off. I didnt understand the "cutting with Xacto" thing. Please elaborate. Glass is a liquid Actually, movie theatre's make money from ticket sales on a sliding scale. The longer a movie is on their screens, the higher the theatre's cut. That's why Hollywood puts so much emphasis on opening weekend box office, because that's the time when the studios get the highest percentage. (It starts at about 90%-10% and goest to about 50%-50% - at least it did when I managed a movie theatre 15 years ago) Movie theatres would much rather a movie open small and build word-of-mouth over time. Of course, they're not going to discount the coke and popcorn just because you're seeing a movie that's been out for two months. Andrew Whatley If you take the ramon noodle seasoning packet and dip it into the water, the remaining seasoning will be dissolved. Dump your decilious Ramon water back in, baby, it's all good. Reading a book is like having a conversation with the author. So, in a sense, I've already lived my dream of meeting Stephen King. As silly as it may sounds, dishwashing liquid should never go into a dishwasher. Dishwasher liquid is perferable and will not leave soap suds all over the kitchen. Oh, and as a completely unrelated note, gas stations only get a fraction of the sales from gas and lottery tickets. They as well get most of their money from soda and snacks within the store. A friend of mine made up a word for the instant you figure things like this out: Stupiphany. little obuvious things that make sence when you think about them... years after you should have figured them out. Its kind of related, but my most memorable one involved the song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" I was in my mid 20's when i relised she wasnt actually kissing santa, she was kissing her husband, the kids father. Rob Cassady MS Power Point>>Tools>>Options>>Select the Save tab and DEselect allow fast saves. This is the default setting with power point. If you open a presentation and just keep saving it you end up with a HUGE file. PPT just tracks the state change and ammends the file. I started with a 1MB file once and ended up with a 4MB just by repeatedly saving. Turn this "feature off" to save 25% file size immediately. Hair conditioner works as a decent substitute for shaving cream if you run out. The powder in diapers makes a great fire retardant. Don't take out or put in your contact lenses immediately after cutting hot peppers. Ideally, wear gloves when cutting the peppers. Nothing is every as good as you had hoped, or as bad as you had feared You need add a warning about not cutting into your own lung to see what it looks like. Your "over-beaten dough" discovery will also apply to potatoes. NEVER over mash taters, they'll turn to glue! For more food related science, TiVo Alton Brown’s show “Good Eats” on the Food network. You’ll like it. I figured out that air mattresses are actually more comfortable if you don't blow them up all the way, leave some room for cushion. Unless, it leaks like 97% of air mattresses out there. In which case, blow it up as much as you can so hopefully by the morning, you're not sleeping on the floor. >> Most people are stupid. I find that few people are able to figure things out on there own. They only know what is told to them and they never question it or they just don't know anything at all. I wish more people were like you (Rob) that can make observations and make logical deductions and learn something first hand. (Example: If you are throwing something out like a VCR, why not grab a screw driver and start taking it apart with the expectation that you will have to put it back together. It won't get fixed, but at least you have started to crack the puzzle of what is inside.) Driving slower in traffic is actually less stressful and it seems like I get home in the same amount of time. Drain-o is not a good mixer with Gin. Here's another tidbit: If you close your eyes before turning off the light to a dark room your eyes will adjust much faster to the low light levels and you'll be able to avoid that table you always stub your toe on. The human nose will continue to grow as people age. That's why women want a small one and men want a big one...I think that may be something else? There is no such thing as chocohol. When drying yourself off with a towel after a shower, start at your head and work down. If you start at your feet and work up, the water from above will run down and get you wet again as you're drying yourself off. The same goes for drying a car. Artificially low speed limits cause normal law-abiding citizens to disregard the law. And that leads them to respect other (legitimate)laws less, which is bad for society. Raise the speed limits! Because of the rotation of the earth, and the plane that all the planets lie in, known as the ecliptic. The sun, moon and planets will all rise and set in nearly the same location each night. But that location shifts a little bit every day. In most states, the gas tax doesn't completely go to transportation. Some of it may, but the rest goes to the general fund for things like jails, education, and welfare. If the gas tax (which is generated from people using cars) was 100% devoted to highways, airports, bike trails, rail, transit, and even some environmental protections, our society would have better transportation systems. I.E. faster commutes! THOSE ARE NOT LOVE BITES MY KITTY IS GIVING ME My mother used to tell me that when my kitty would bite me she was just giving me "love bites." I am 30 now, and I finally realized about 4 months ago that this is not actually true. In fact, they are "stop bothering me you insufferable little hooligan" bites. Unicorns are really more believable than dinosaurs, when you think about it for a while. I discovered that pouring a glass slowly is more likely to result in dribbling than pouring quickly. nose hairs can't get really long if you don't trim them This is great, Rob! I think this should be a regular feature on Cockeyed. My little discovery: My mind was blown when I learned that a wet sponge will hold much more water than a dry sponge. This is because water molecules like to stick to each other. Or, more scientifically: "The water molecule forms an angle, with hydrogen atoms at the tips and oxygen at the vertex. Since oxygen has a higher electronegativity than hydrogen, the side of the molecule with the oxygen atom has a partial negative charge. A molecule with such a charge difference is called a dipole. The charge differences cause water molecules to be attracted to each other (the relatively positive areas being attracted to the relatively negative areas) and to other polar molecules. This attraction is known as hydrogen bonding, and explains many of the properties of water." That's from the Wikipedia entry on water. Most people think of water as boring, but water is awesome! Food keeps cooking after you remove it from heat! So if you're cooking a thick steak, and the internal temperature is 140 degrees, it can go as high as 145 degrees AFTER you take it off the grill. I would assume this is because the temperature of the parts touching the grill are hotter than the center, and the heat destributes itself evenly after removal. Fire burns… water is wet. Etc… The brain is much better able to deal with too much blood than too little. This is why too-little-blood strokes outnumber too-much-blood strokes 4:1. I learned during my years that Fire sprinklers are not installed in building because people want to save lives... But because the building code says we have too. milk is a bodily excretion, and drinking it may be the worst idea conceptually! Its a little disturbing that you figured out the lung thing on your own. Deer don't necessarily cross at "deer crossing" signs. Everybody is a bad driver sometimes. Homework is like painting the golden gate bridge, As soon as you finish, you have to restart Rob, i think a big army of Rabid pandas just started attacking me, PLEASE help... Growing plants get their mass from the air. When I was little I always thought that they took up pounds and pounds of nutrients from the ground and converted soil into organic matter. In fact, the plants actually sequester carbon from the atmosphere and mix it with water to form plant sugars and protiens. If you want to learn more you can probably Google "carbon cycle". This was a good post Rob. - Daniel Emotionally, psychologically, and personally: Porn isn't free. It costs everyone (even those not directly involved) something. When I was 11 or 12 years old, I figured out that TV stations only play commercials FOR THEIR OWN SHOWS. Until then, I thought it was an altruistic world where all stations just wanted you to watch the best available programming. Sadly, I found that this is not the case. I've had several customer service jobs. I've recently come to realize that the customers aren't stupid. It may seem like a disproportionate chunk of the people you see every day are complete idiots, but the fact is that they've got more going on in their lives than, say, renting a movie. So if they don't know the late fee policy at your rental store, it's because they haven't spent the time to learn the policy, not because they are too stupid to understand it. PS Glass is not a liquid. It's an amorphous solid. Everything you see in a museum is about one tenth or less of what they actually have. There are rooms just full of fun stuff that they don't put on display. Also: the Buffalo Bills are named for Buffalo Bill Cody and the baby Bells come from the Bell telephone company, which was named after... Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone! Both seems obvious in retrospect but hell if I didn't do the 2 + 2 on them for the longest time... The angle of the dangle is directly proportional to the heat of the meat. tell you rwaiter when the food is bad. They don't have a reason to not want to give you a good experience, and being passive aggressive doesn't make your meal any better. most women, if not all, are insane and should be treated accordingly. Soylent Green is People cops lie, always, so you shouldn't trust them I think the colander will melt faster than the bowl The slogan is "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee", not "Nobody does it like Sara Lee". I had to see it written on a truck to catch the nuance. My mother was a hamster, and my father smelt of elderberries. I found your discovery about how candles burn wax to be the most interesting. I knew that wax was being burned, but I did not know *how*. Now I do! Great! wow i never thought of the thought balloon one thats a good idea! and that lungone kinda grossed me out but only cuz you put so much detail into describing it but yeah wow man my mind has been opened! Cool observations/discoveries/whatever. My own little discovery is: Don't water houseplants, until they start wilting. I'm sure that people who actually love gardening have ways of knowing when to water your houseplant, but for a botanically challenged guy I always used to overwater plants (variation on the them of overfeeding pets). Then I had this plant in my flat that a friend gave me, I basically forgot about it and would water it only when I looked at it and thought, "Oh, crap, it's dead!" As it would be all wilted. But afterwards, it picked right back up to its happy self. Repeat this cycle for a couple of years, and that darned thing stayed alive and grew and was green and everything. So don't water houseplants, until they start wilting. While it may be advisable to mix a smidgen of a color's complement into that color to dull it down, doing so too much will turn your paintings into mud, which is not desirable. Pure color gets some taking used to using, but it's great! Coffee protects against liver damage from drinking alcohol. Who knew one vice could cancel out another? I'm going to start a compare and contrast vice-o-matic study to see what cancels out what! Wow - The lung thing is a revelation. I do not know why I thought that lungs were two big bags. To find out that they're more like big sponges kinda grosses me out. My little discovery: When unable to print something you need off the internet (say a confimation of a bill payment or a reciept with bar code for a ticket purchase), just hit print screen, open microsoft paint, and paste. You'll have it later when you can print. I learned that "Douglas" used to be a girl's name, and "Laurie" used to be a boy's name! I found this out staring at the tiles in the bathroom one day. When my eyes went out of focus, the tiles seemed to 'float' in the air. I found by forcing myself to cross my eyes just enough to line up the lines with the double image you get by crossing your eyes I could fake myself into seeing the lines as one line once they were perfectly aligned. What this leads up to is after I saw that I then realized how those 3d posters with the repeating shapes that your supposed to stare at until they become 3d work. Those cute little vases with the beta fish and plants in top? Those are evil. They are not--and I mean NOT--suitable places to keep a fish! (Nor are those teeny tiny little "beta bowls"--do YOU want to be kept in solitary confinement your entire life?!) And please, for goodness sake, do a lot of partial water changes for the poor creatures. I always draw the bubble first and I always regret it. I read all of that. Don't fry bacon naked. It stings. Windows Key + Pause/Break Key brings up System Properties Schools are paid by the kid differently in Ohio. The rate is based on average attendence per day for the FIRST TEN DAYS of the school year. So here, especially in the largest cities, Superintendents work very hard to get all kids there for those days. The actually go door-to-door, and they offer incentives like "fun days" during the count, free food and candy, awards, etc. On day 11 it stops, and if the kid disappears it's not so bad, especially if he's a "problem student". Hiccups are voluntary. When you don't want to hiccup anymore, just decide to stop. I learned at a very early age that macs are the best computers you can buy. What i don't is why no one else realises this... I'm-a-gonna have to question Gerald Higgins' candle wick theory. I think the wick only burns when it is outside the flame - take a look sometime and notice this is where the red part is. Or, trim the wick and light the candle - notice it doesn't start getting shorter until it pokes the outside of the flame. Oil lamps work the same way as candles (oil and 'wax' (paraffin) are both petrolium products), yet oil lamp wicks last *much* longer because they don't poke outside the flame. You can microwave a container of juice concentrate with the metal endcaps still on, and there are no sparks! I don't know why. I thought it was so cool that my son was starting to crawl until he actually started to crawl everywhere. "I wash my hands in the sink." It's called a sink because it's sunken below the surface of the counter. I think you'd like Tricks of the Trade. It's got lots of little common-sense things that you might never think of on your own: http://www.tradetricks.org/ When I started drinking tea, I asked someone how much loose tea to put in the teabag. She said, "about a teaspoon full." My head promptly exploded ... that's why they call it a teaspoon! But I was wrong. It's actually because you use it to stir the tea. It is easier to peel bananas from the opposite side that most people peel them from, i.e. peel them from the end that isn't attached to the bunch. -Derek One day I was loading up a BB gun with a friend and I said, "I don't know why they call these things BBs, they're just ball bearings..." pieces of coral attached to the head with common wood screws can make a child look like a deer san deimous high school football rules! It's happened to you. You and someone else are converging from opposite directions, and you both spend a few long seconds doing the zigzag dance before either colliding or going on your way. This problem would be solved, and the world improved in a minor way, if everyone would learn to ZIGZAG RIGHT. Yes, along with "please" and "thank you" and potty training, we could all learn to zigzag right. Let's start a meme, people. Also, word wrap is a good thing. Dogs are better than robots. I never really realized that fact about lungs before. Thanks to you, I am now a smarter person. When rinsing your toothbrush, flick the bristles facing down towards the sink rather than facing up towards the mirror. You will never have to clean the toothpaste off the mirror again. That Bender on Futurama is named so not because he bends metal, but because he drinks. He's always on a 'bender'. Your first observation is slightly off. It's true that you shouldn't overmix certain kinds of dough, like scones, but more broadly dough that's leavened with baking powder/soda. They'll get tough and dry. However, dough that's leavened with yeast, which includes pizza dough and most Wonder-esque breads, *needs* the bejezus mixed out of it in order to produce gluten. The gluten makes the final product tender and delicious. If you leave a pile of papers - all in disorder - on the edge of your desk nearest the enterance to your cubical, people walking by will think you are busy, and thus leave you alone, not give you more work to do Cassie : when mailing important documents always use a delivery service where you can track the package. For the record, this is a fun little page of things I never (or barely) knew. Here's one for you, though it may be more speculation than anything else. >.>;; When it comes down to playing a game, any game, where there is a luck-based scenaario (you have to roll a die, flip/choose a card, guess) you'll do better if you think you will... Also, on a more scientific note, always roll six-sided dice that have pips, not numbers. The pips take away a small amount of the dice's weight on the sides that are pip-laden, so you will roll high numbers (4,5,6) more often than low numbers (1,2,3). Then again, it could also be something I just noticed, and my mind went BOOM! SCIENCE! I discovered if you have a kick ass web site, you can become a TV star like Rob! Dare to dream kids! *heart you*, Kaye in Kalamazoo They say that Sperm Whales are named after the Spermaceti found in the whale's enormous frontal head casing, mistakenly thought to be sperm by sailors... but I don't believe it, I think sailors were joking around about how the substance reminded them of jiz, and scientists never gave the whale a proper name until it was too late. I mean, do you store sperm in your forehead?? People stare at the floor-indicator lights in elevators. If I designed elevators, I'd make really cool looking number-lights. ..........burr...... looks like a pete's wicked strawberry blonde in the photo of the condensation. I used to wonder why the big plastic velcroed binders that everybody had in elementary school were called "Trapper Keepers". Just a couple weeks ago I was at the office supply store and saw a row of simple, plain paper pocket folders with a clearly marked label: Trappers. Hence, the "Trapper" - Keeper Actually, only meat keeps cooking after it's removed from the heat. Rubbing your hands on a stainless steel surface under running water after chopping garlic or onions completely removes the smell. No soap required. I don't know why it happens, but it does. "New" York is just named after "Old" York in England... duh. Oooo, I never knew that about candles, Mmmmmmmm capillary action. Thank you for imparting knowledge! Two things I figured out about driving: never drive faster than the car in front of you; and always look in the direction your car is moving (if you are backing out of a parking space, this can mean looking in two directions at once--behind you and at the front-turning end of the car). Expensive lessons. Hey Rob I can't say I really discovered these as I am a biologist, but I still think it is neat: Plants with fruit are very clever: When a tree grows it needs resourses and it doesn't want competition so it produces nice succulent fruit that an animal wants to eat and nice hard seeds that won't get digested. That way, hopefully, an animal will be a way away from the tree it ate the fruit from when the seed comes out the other end, thus it germinates somewhere else, not in direct competition with the parent tree. So when you eat and apple, do nature a favour and eat the seeds too. Then you know what to do ... And the opposite: Accacias are thorny buggers, and for good reason - they don't like being eaten. But antelopes, especially, are persistant buggers and will still try and eat an accacia. To counteract this, when something that seems to be attacking the tree comes along the accacia releases a chemical that travels in the air and signals to all other accacias in the area which then release a substance that makes anything remotely edible on it very bitter and repulsive to any animal that tries to have a nibble. Tree communication is not only cool but a little bit scary. I could go on and on with little biology facts that I didn't actually figure out myself. The one's I figured out myself are a bit dumb (well apart from the original journal papaers I got published!) and include how I suddenly realised well into my teens that the reason nobody get's hurt during a 21 gun salute is that they don't put bullets/cannon balls in the guns/cannons. Eleanor San Diego Disposable cups are a big expense to fast food stores. With a lid and a straw, they cost more than a nickel a piece. But markup on soft drinks from a soda fountain is something like 2000% That's why they hate to give you a cup for free water. Taking the stairs is often faster than waiting for the elevator. No matter how hot she is, someone, somewhere is sick of her shit. You know, they make these guide things for X-acto knives that let you cut at a nice 90 degree angle. As an architecture student, I can tell you that these are incredibly useful. You don't have to dial a 1 before a long distance number when using a cell phone. (Age 18) Indian TeePee's have nothing to do with TPing a house. TP stands for toilet paper. (Age 19 and 5 TP's later). Those height charts in convenience stores and banks are for determining robber's height, not for customers to use to check their own height (an obscure form of customer service). (age 20). You go to a skating rink, not a skating ring. What is a rink? (Last week, age 28). How did I ever get a Master's degree... I believe I am the first person in the world to Snurp! Sneeze and Burp at the same time. It was very painful. When a small child says, even once, "I think I have to go potty", and then changes their mind and doesn't want to go- escort them to the bathroom and ensure that they go potty. You'll find out the hard way if you don't. This should become a feature! Great article. when i lived next door to people who had horses, i used to stroke the horses and whatever, and get a waxy substance on my hand after. i figured that this was to stop the hair getting too wet and the horses getting too cold. chaz p.s)I know what you mean about the speech bubble, but i still havent learnt my lesson! Macs might be good computers, but Mac users, by and large (and by this I mean 99.87%) turn into pricks about the subject. "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh". Or, to put it in Freudian terms, there's no such thing as a joke. When speaking to some people, it's best to take everything they say very, very literally. Keep that information strictly to yourself, and be forewarned about the kind of behavior you can expect from them in different circumstances. However in conversation with them, it is best to respond on their level- fake it until you can exit that conversation. This will help you avoid the creeps and abusers that come along sometimes. It is best to buy the best shoes, the best car, and the best bed that you can afford. You will be spending about 100% of your life in one or the other of them, so you ought to be comfortable. I learned, just the other day, that I only have 1 arm. How exactly did you figure out on your own that movie theatres get little of the money from movie ticket sales? Always doublecheck things and situations. It will save you from getting burned in the long run, many times. What, like you just cut some lungs open to figure that out? My guess is you learned that somewhere. Liar. Learning from a book is still learning! Sheesh. When rolling your coins using flat coin sleeves, count out the change first, then place one of your fingers inside the roll to expand the sleeve. Place a few coins in the sleeve at a time and use your inserted finger to steady them in place. After about 1/3 of the sleeve is filled, add the remaining coins. the more I know, the less I understand Veronica Mars is the best show in the history of television. I was cloned from Rob Cockerham. He kept the brains, but I got the looks. ~ www.theendisnow.com When your car deccelerates, a helium balloon inside the car will float to the back of the car, in contrast to everything else that rolls to the front. water is 2 parts hydrogen, 1 part oxygen pickles are cucumbers Excellent! I'm sure i've had millions of these "aaaah" moments, but I can't remember any of them. I guess the information just becomes "known" - I can't remember not knowing the thing. So well done on remembering what you realised! -Rachel, Scotland This is perhaps one of the most useful pages on the Internet. It's hard to find good advice these days. I have some advice: typing "www." and ".com" is a waste of time. Just type "cockeyed" and then press Ctrl and Enter and it'll fill in the rest for you. I just saved you eight keystrokes! -Brandon Dilbeck The Y2K disaster could not possibly have happened. The fear here was that since computers kept track of only the last two digits of the year, as soon as the 1999 ended, computers would interpret 2000 as 00 and THEY WOULD THINK THEY WEREN'T INVENTED YET!!! Yep. That's seriously the reason that people expected the world to end. Since computers weren't around in the year 00, they would launch nuclear weapons at all points of the earth or something equally ludacris. Of course, instead of buying Y2K protection software and bottled water (just in case), you could have set the clock on your computer to 00 or, better yet, stopped and questioned what the news anchors were saying. If your boiled dumplings are tough, they are overdone. You cannot possibly soften them by further boiling - you will only make them worse. Brushing your gums is actually good for them, not injury-causing, as you might expect. Game controllers are meant to be held gently. Pushing the buttons harder will not make your character jump higher, run faster, or fight harder, and your thumbs will blister. None of your laundry really needs to be tumble-dryed (although duvets will take forever if you don't). Air drying is much better. water expands when it freezes... The idea that the moon comes out at night is wrong. The moon is up during the day for about half the month. The stars and planets are up during the day too, but the sky is usually too bright to see them. I agree with you, except for the dough thing... Farmers like to tell you that their four week olds kittens are seven weeks, to get rid of them sooner. The iHitler is made out of Germans! Ky Jelly is really slippery. Cops are assholes! The powder in diapers is made of paper, and does not make a good fire retardant. Unless you own a movie theater, you could have possibly figure out how much they make on your own. Am I right or am I right? Jello(R) is solid-ish at room temperature! When you make it, you use HOT water and then put it in the fridge. However, the fridge only speeds up the solidification (jelloification?) of the product. If you leave Jello out of the fridge at a comfertable temp., it will not melt. I witnessed a bowl of the stuff last for 3 days in a closet before being trashed. You are an absolute idiot for not figuring these out sooner. I found that chicken fried steak has no chicken in it. If Steve jobs decided to urinate in a bottle, Mac users would claim it's the best tasting bottled water money can buy. Static Guard is next to the starch in Walmart Nicely done! Meat, it should also be said, is nauseating when shown on styrofoam-- if the viewer has gone many moons without eating any. If you made a better discussion forum, it would really make my life easier. I hate having to scroll horizontally to read people's comments. I also want to be able to reply to other idiots posting comments. If police officers don't like to give out tickets why do they sit by the side of the road waiting for you to speed by? Rob Cockerham is one of the awesome-est people. A bicycle wheel behaves like a circular suspension bridge only it starts out fully loaded and riding unloads it locally. Green, black, white, red, and oolong tea are all made by steeping the same plant - the only difference is the amount of leaf oxidation. Always..no, no...never...forget to check your references. (I like to "get down" verbally) Mixing dough that is to eventually become a big loafy loaf of bread is ESSENTIAL! It is what produces the super texture that makes real bread (we ain't talkin' wonderbread here) so yummy. And just so's your sciencey brain can understand: "As you knead dough many important things take place: the gluten becomes developed so the bread can rise to its fullest, air bubbles are incorporated into the dough necessary for the dough's rise and the ingredients are redistributed for the yeast to feed on resulting in a more active fermentation. This enables the dough to expand to it fullest during the rising and baking steps." You should always mix for at least 7 minutes. Windows key + D = show desktop. All my friends love that one. Party at Vanderpluyms. I should probably stop shoving hot needles in my eye! NEVER lick the cake off of a knife. Having to work two more weeks after quiting isn't fun. If an ad tells you to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, it doesn't mean to send a sealed but empty envelope that you addressed and stamped yourself. They want an empty envelope with a stamp on it IN the envelope that has YOUR address in the "to:" area. Alt+Tab Stay in school. No, really. Give head. Everyone requires it. Particularly women. You can indeed get a stitch through a thumbnail. And that novocaine shot likely didn't penetrate far enough, so brace yourself. We're all on the same side. Everyone. We all have the same goal. We all just want happiness. There isn't any need to fuss about it. Just recognize that my happiness depends on your happiness, vice-versa, and et cetera. Noone can really be happy with themself unless they feel free to be themself. Parents weren't trained to do what they do, so forgive their mistakes. In Mexico, when the exchange rate of Pesos and US Dolores changes, the prices of just about everything change. But in the US, when the rate changes, the prices stay the same. Which makes US dollars more valuable no matter what the rate is. So next time your in Mexico and you think you're getting ripped off, you probably are. Offer a much lower price than the USD equivalent, but in US dollars. It almost always works. a donut without a hole is a danish The dollar, or any other currency for that matter, is just a poor unit of measurement for worth. Very nice discoveries...I'm 21 and just figured out the "black, white and read all over" joke. Truly, people only make money on other people's backs. the arby's logo is a hat. For the longest time, it baffled me as to what the red loopy thing was that said "Arby's". It's a hat. Also, the saturn logo is a side view of the planet. this was definitely a holy-crap moment for me. I always thought it was neat little swooshy things. Maybe I'm just a moron. iron the sleeves of a shirt first the reason food continues to cook after it is removed from the heat source is simply diffusion. For example, say you have a half-cup of water at 200*F and a half cup at 50*F. Mix them together in a vaccuum and the temperature should be 125*F. Every bit of matter wants to be the same temperature as every other bit of matter, it's just the make up of the matter determines how well it conducts heat/energy. Any part of the steak that is REALLY really hot, it will cook the parts around it. Same goes for any matter. My biggest "duh" moment was when I discovered that the "afternoon" was called that because it's after noon. I felt reallly stupid. records sound better than CD's/DVD's/other digital media because they are uncompressed data. CD's and such have the data turned into 0's and 1's so therefore can't truly produce all the sounds that where fed into it. records, on the other hand, are analog so they produce the exactly the same sounds fed into it. try it yourself! (the difference is easier to hear with expensive stereo systems though) everyone eventually duct tapes their babies diapers, or you can imagine what happens if you don't When you take your sweatshirt off, your shirt comes up. The brand of pretzels "rold gold" is saying the pretzels are "rolled gold" My dog isn't sad when I'm gone all day - she LOVES sleeping until 5:30, and gets angry when I come home early and interupt her schedule. Which makes me a little sad. i think you're a genius. ish. Andrew Whatley is only partially right about glass. It is a solid at room temperature. His confusion probably comes from an old wive's tale about old window glass being thicker at the bottom than at the top. That's just the way they were made, Andrew. Look it up at snopes.com 4chan will suck you dry no matter what I second the speech bubble thing. :D Ball point pens are called that for a reason! There is a little ball on the end that rolls against the ink cartridge on the inside of the pen and then rolls onto the paper. And when it dries, you can lick the tip to remoisten the ink! penerotica! In response to your candle bit, I've discovered (at an early age no less) that you can actually set wax on fire. I used to cover rocks with wax, and just constantly expose it to fire (wood underneath the rock, lighters, whatever I could find). Initially the wax will just melt and get really hot. Eventually though, the wax itself will catch fire and you get yourself a neat little burning rock. Depending on how much wax has been taken up by the rock, it can burn for quite some time. Same principle as a candlewick, except .. a rock. Great fun! Dough mixing is actually a mixed bag. In more delicate pastries, like scones, you are trying to form a certain, minimal amount of gluten (so overmixing is deleterious). In bread, however, gluten formation is desirable in the larger amounts induced by thorough mixing. It is possible to overmix bread, but usually only with an electric mixer, and it's tricky even then. When you pick your butt it makes for finger stink Hey Rob......When I was about 10, I found out that if a long sleeve shirt comes out of the dryer with one sleeve inside out, this is easily corrected by putting the shirt on as is, grabbing the inside out cuff with your protruding hand and pulling the sleeve back through the shoulder hole. Then re-insert arm into newly righted sleeve. I figured this out the day after I learned I had a protruding hand. Your Canadian bud, Gord. After mid-May, schools no longer send in attendance data for money. So a kid who misses that last day of school doesn't cost the school money. Oh, and eating a ton of oreos can make your poop black! Sugar burns... all cell phones are NOT required to have GPS tracking in them, but instead must contain a way to easily track its location. Instead of using a satellite, the phone actually times how long a signal takes to get to one tower and then to another tower, and then using simple physics (velocity=distance/time) and simple geometry your position is triangulated. Isnt that interesting? When the first cell phones came out, anyone who could send signals to your phone via multiple towers could have tracked you *cough*government*cough* So unless the three little letters GPS appear somewhere on the outside of your phone, your phone does not have a GPS chip, so stop asing the cell company to track your phone because it fell off your lap when you were getting out of your car and you didnt notice because you were explaining to your friend how they can track your cell phone without a GPS embedded in it. Oh yeah, great job on everything, i will certainly DVR the 20/20 this friday so that i dont miss it! no matter what anyone ever says, glass is hard -cablesinside Ice cubes are white because of little air bubbles trapped inside the water as it freezes. Almost all Helium balloons are powered by NUCLEAR REACTIONS. Yep.. Helium is a by-product of nuclear electric generation. Why won't Bush let the Iranians make their own Helium Balloons? it's better to put your pants on before your shoes. This is more true for long pants than for shorts but even with shorts, definitely shoes last. two discoveries about china. ciao is actually italian.... not chineese (chow) as I thought for many years... I was also thraumatized to learn in the national geographic magazine that one cannot see the great wall of china from space! I LERND HOW TO EAT PIE WIF A FOERK. www.wikipedia.com Cut both sides of the milk bag, then it won't flop over when you're pouring! -Ferggs penis Hey, Rob. I used to work for Raley's (in Las Vegas) and we were actually *trained* in meat. That doesn't sound too strange for someone working in the meat department, but I ran the customer service booth. We were trained in the different USDA labels and what marbling is. Oh, and did you know that Raley's was the first grocery chain in Southern Nevada to offer USDA Choice meat? We didn't have USDA Select meat on our shelves like the other grocery chains. We were also the only major grocery chain in Southern Nevada to offer paper bags with handles. Of course, Trader Joe's offered them, too, but we were the first major grocery chain to offer them. Customers loved them. They can hold two cases of soda cans and still not break. Now all the other grocery stores in Vegas are offering USDA Choice meat and paper bags with handles. You heard it here, folks, Raley's offered them first! Raley's was a wonderful company to work for and it's a shame they pulled out of Southern Nevada. I really miss working for them. I've worked for two other grocery chains here in Vegas and they can't even compare when it comes to customer service and employee morale. As a former Raley's employee, I truly believe that if you treat the customer the way you like to be treated, they'll always come back. ~Megan~ The secret to cooking perfect hamburgers is to make a larger, thinner patty than what you would like to eventually have on your bun. As the meat cooks, it shrinks, so if you form a raw patty that is the size and thickness of your perfect cooked hamburger, what you will end up with is a charred ball of meat that is raw inside! Also, worcestershire sauce. When cooking, don't wait until pure cooking oil "boils" before adding ingredients. Also, don't try to cool a wok of smoking hot oil by pouring cold water into it. Learning process described on http://mirriwinni.it.jcu.edu.au/~cgaskett/thewiki/FalafelIncident Thanks, Chris Gaskett Granted, I learned this a long time ago, but it was quite an epiphany: Older people are made up of two groups: men and women. They're not just differently shaped versions of the same thing. Also, if you have a penis, there is overwhelming evidence that you will grow up to be a man. Again, this is something that I figured out when I was but a wee lad. cool There's two things I've learnt in life - you get what you pay for, and the importance of servicing things, wheather that's your car or your body, everything needs a once over every now and again In the second (and run-on) sentence of the first paragraph of the "Candles burn the wax" story you say that the wick does not burn. Then in the second (and properly formed) sentence of the second paragraph you say that the wick does burn. Which one is it? Einstein. If you want ice with your drink, put the ice in the cup before you pour the drink in. This prevents splashing when you drop ice cubes into a liquid. Similarly, pour milk into cereal, not the other way around. Always make more rice than you think you'll need for dinner cause everyone loves rice. And if they're some left over have it tomorrow with butter and soy sauce. A dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked. I discovered how absolutely fantastic the band Queen is. I really really really like them. A lot. And not just their hits. I mean like entire albums. I regularly make etymological discoveries. Not complicated ones going back to Greek, Latin or pre-Indo-European. Simple ones. Like the verb «encouraging» has the root «courage». I must not be alone... Let's hope... Great article and awesome site. If you're eating at a restaurant with unlimited free refills, buy the smallest drink possible. Then, refill as needed. (Thanks Trevor) never tell a girl she's fat; always results in crying, or violence Virginia is further west than West Virginia. Some old common sensalities, some new epiphanies. I'm drunk. I've discovered that if you heat a slice of bread over a fire or electric coils until it starts to turn brown, it is transformed into a tasty food I call toast. I really don't want to know how you "just figured out" what lungs are really made of. Especially since the item after the lungs on the list concerns Xacto knives... Wash your car in the shade, not the sun.