and Twitter.
Also, in case there was any doubt, some of our favorite college towns across the US are Missoula, Montana (Go Grizzlies!), Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gainesville, Florida
As I said news services LOVE this type of stuff towards the end of the year. What the hell, we love them too. PELE hates his nickname, 200 million dead blogs (dlogs?), people actually suffer from Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs (the fear of the term 666)!? What is the world coming to, I tell ya.
Read more: 100 things we know now that we didn’t last year (Thanks Jurie)
As is common at the end of every year, newspapers are starting their yearly lists of stuff. From the top 50 things we know now to the 10 under reported stories of the year, lists are always handy to fill up space and draw in readers. Today, the Tampa Tribune listed the top 50 things we know now that we didn’t this time last year and man it’s fun. I for one am glad to know that life expectancy in the U.S. is now up to 77.9 years old and that scientists at the University of Manchester have managed to induce teeth growth in normal chickens by activating a gene that has lain dormant for 80 million years. It’s only a matter of time before we have a new feathered predator on our hands here folks.
Read more: 50 things we know now that we didn’t this time last year
A recent American Airlines flight from Washington bound to Dallas/Fort Worth had to make an unscheduled landing in Nashville earlier this week due to strong smell of burning matches within the cabin. As the plane was evacuated and the passengers questioned, one of them admitted to striking the matches in order to cover up their body odor, which they said was due to a medical condition. Seems it’s perfectly legal to bring soft matches aboard an aircraft you just aren’t allowed to light them. If only it were illegal to pass gas in a pressurized cabin 35,000 feet in the air.
Read more: Flatulence and matches forces plane to land
Being a North Carolinian I couldn’t resist mentioning this. I always find it fascinating when cargo containers fall off ships, causing whatever they were transporting to either sink to the bottom of the ocean or float until it meets land. We saw it years ago with the rubber ducky tests which oceanographers used to track ocean currents, and we’ve all heard of everything from cars to Nike’s being washed overboard on the high seas. This time a cargo container carrying a shipment of Doritos brand chips fell off of a ship and cracked open, leading to hundreds of bags of Doritos to float freely through the Atlantic Ocean. The container, along with the Doritos washed up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with most of the Doritos packages still in-tact thanks to the airtight packaging. What followed was a minor small-time news storm, as scavengers descended upon the cheesy goodness, the media swarmed into to film those filling shopping bags full of chips while a handful of scrooges gave interviews complaining about the American way and stealing and season of giving, but everyone is taking and blah blah blah.
Read more: Doritos container spills, washes up on North Carolina beach
According to a Massachusetts judge, a burrito is officially not a sandwich. Whew, I’m glad that’s been cleared up and the world can sleep a little easier at night. The case was brought by rivaling restaurant chains, when one chain who specialized in sandwiches and other bread-based food products, tried to use a lease agreement which stated no competing sandwich companies could move into the same mall. The problem, this was a Mexican restaurant, not a sandwich factory. The case went before the courts, where, on the testimony of many food and cultural experts, the judge heard that no reputable chef or culinary historian would ever label a burrito as a sandwich.
Read more: Judge rules burritos aren’t sandwiches
According to recent statements from a former head of the Ministry of defense UFO Project, aliens are plotting to attack the world, more specifically Britain, and could attack any moment now! The former head, Nick Pope, feels that it’s a mistake for his government project to practically be shut down and for humans to dismiss highly credible sightings so easily. According to Pope, we’re wide open for an attack by aliens and it’s a big mistake!
Read more: Aliens could attack at any time
In celebration of the news that Hubble is getting it’s much needed upgrade after-all, we’re linking to the European Space Agency’s Hubble information page, which collects thousands of photographs taken from the Hubble Telescope in it’s over 93,000 rotations around the Earth.
See more: ESA’s top 100 photos from Hubble
With the November mid-term elections rapidly approaching in the U.S., it’s time once again to get all worked up over polling numbers and argue over which group of politicians will be in charge of helping themselves rather than the residents of the United States. My favorite site for keeping up to date with the state by state polling is Electoral Vote, the horribly yellow, but oddly appealing meta-poll site, which collects day to day polling results from the top polling institutes, whether they be Democratic or Republican, and averages them together, giving us an untainted look at the polling numbers being tossed around the country. If you can actually consider polling to be untainted.
Read more: Electoral Vote
Hoax from the land down under? You decide. Australia’s Courier Mail are reporting that the U.S. has recently begun enforcing a ban on the import of Vegemite, the salty food paste made from yeast extract that Australians seem to love spread on their breakfast toast. With reports of Vegemite checks at border crossings, import shops and airports, Australians reportedly are beginning to feel the crunch. Vegemite, a brand now owned by food conglomerate Kraft Foods, is said to contain Folate, an ingredient which is only allowed in U.S. breads and cereals.
Read more: Vegemite banned in the U.S. | Vegemite @ Wikipedia
The bubble got a little more inflated today as the king of video sharing sites was scooped up by Google, the king of everything else, for $1.65 billion dollars in stock. Expect millions to be poured into video sharing sites for the next few months, maybe a year, then watch as one by one these sites begin to fall by the wayside. Mark Cuban is probably selling off all of his Google holdings right now and the blogosphere is about to explode. All of this excitement with our 300th posting here on Bunch of Nerds!
December 28th in 