October 2017
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I calculate that for the last seventy-five years I've eaten a box of raisins every month (I'm a big fan of raisins and of dried fruit in general). A box of raisins is about 5 inches tall, 4 inches wide and 2 inches deep, or forty cubic inches. In a an average year, I eat…
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Otzi the freeze-dried 5300 year old Tyrolean man/mummy continues to be studied and his corpse regularly yields new information. Otzi was about 45 years old, stood 5'3" and weighed only about 110 pounds. He had been wounded with an arrow in the shoulder which pierced an artery. He may have bled to death or,…
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In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, it is reported that the woman who is eventually revealed to be Estella's mother was married "over the broomstick (as we say), to a tramping man." Dickens offers no explanation for "over the broomstick," apparently assuming that it was a concept with which his readers were familiar. There is in…
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I had to change the name on my Comcast — now they call it Xfinity — account (internet, TV, "landline"). In the pencil and paper days, you would just cross out the old name and put in the new. But that's not how it works nowadays. I didn't want to call the company and be…