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Aberzombie wrote:
The G.I. Joe trademark has been used by Hasbro to title two different toy lines. The original 12-inch (30 cm) line introduced on February 2, 1964 centered on realistic action figures.

I had one of those. When my kid brother eventually got some of the smaller "Cobra Command" dolls, I exclaimed, disgustedly, "Those aren't G.I. Joe!"


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I had the one with the "life like hair" and Kung Fu grip.

Scarab Sages

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DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I had the one with the "life like hair" and Kung Fu grip.

Starting with my older brothers, going up through mostly me (and maybe my younger brother) we had a ton of the old 12-inch line of figures. My mom probably still has most of it in a box (or boxes) somewhere in her attic. Unless, of course, one of my brother's has snagged it all, which I actually suspect to be the case.


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I remember an internet reviewer (MovieBob) who gave a neat rundown of G.I. Joe:

"This was my grandfather's G.I. Joe:" A series of war correspondence letters, showing life during WW2.

"This was my father's G.I. Joe:" The aforementioned realistic military figurines.

"This was my G.I. Joe:" GOOOOOO JOE!

Liberty's Edge

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I saw an ad for a cartoon called "G. I. Joe: Sigma 6" once. I wonder whether they knew that Sigma 6 was the name of the first band that Syd Barrett and Roger Waters formed. Sigma 6, of course, morphed into Pink Floyd.

Scarab Sages

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R.E.M. was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, lead guitarist Peter Buck, bassist/backing vocalist Mike Mills, and lead vocalist Michael Stipe. One of the first alternative rock bands, R.E.M. was noted for Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style, Stipe's particular vocal quality and obscure lyrics, and Mills' melodic basslines and backing vocals. R.E.M. released their first single—"Radio Free Europe"—in 1981 on the independent record label Hib-Tone. The single was followed by the Chronic Town EP in 1982, the band's first release on I.R.S. Records. In 1983, the group released its critically acclaimed debut album, Murmur, and built its reputation over the next few years through subsequent releases, constant touring, and the support of college radio. Following years of underground success, R.E.M. achieved a mainstream hit in 1987 with the single "The One I Love". The group signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1988, and began to espouse political and environmental concerns while playing large arenas worldwide.

By the early 1990s, when alternative rock began to experience broad mainstream success, R.E.M. was viewed by subsequent acts such as Nirvana and Pavement as a pioneer of the genre. The band then released its two most commercially successful albums, Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), which veered from the band's established sound and catapulted it to international fame. R.E.M.'s 1994 release, Monster, was a return to a more rock-oriented sound, but still continued its run of success. The band began its first tour in six years to support the album; the tour was marred by medical emergencies suffered by three of the band members.

In 1996, R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. for a reported US$80 million, at the time the most expensive recording contract in history. Its 1996 release, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, though critically acclaimed, fared worse commercially than expected. The following year, Bill Berry left the band, while Stipe, Buck, and Mills continued the group as a trio. Through some changes in musical style, the band continued its career into the next decade with mixed critical and commercial success, despite having sold more than 85 million records worldwide and becoming one of the world's best-selling music artists of all time. In 2007, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in their first year of eligibility. R.E.M. disbanded amicably in September 2011, announcing the split on its website.

Scarab Sages

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Before his career as an actor, Carl Weathers was a professional football player. During his professional football career, he played for the Oakland Raiders and a Canadian Football League squad.


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American voice actor Charles Martinet, known in recent years for his role as the dragon Paarthurnax in the 2011 video game The Elder Scolls V: Skyrim, since 1995 has been the voice of one of the most iconic characters in video game history-- Mario, of the Super Mario Bros. series.

Other notable actors in Skyrim include Academy Award winner Christopher Plummer (Arngeir), Academy Award nominee Max von Sydow (Esbern), Tony Award winner and three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen (Delphine), Wonder Woman star Lynda Carter (Gormlaith Golden-Hilt), Battlestar Galactica and Mass Effect 3's Michael Hogan (General Tullius), Babylon 5 star Claudia Christian (Aela the Huntress), Crayon Shin-Chan (US dub) voice actress Laura Bailey (Serana), and Star Trek: The Next Generation and The A-Team's Dwight Schultz (Master Neloth).

Scarab Sages

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Tallgrass Brewing Company is a craft brewery in Manhattan, KS. Tallgrass is the largest brewery in Kansas, and is distributed in 13 states as of May 2015.

The brewery was founded by Jeff Gill in 2006. Gill was a former geologist, who had learned brewing as a homebrewer. Though initially the beers were bottled, the brewery switched to cans in 2010 for environmental and quality reasons. In 2014, the Brewery moved from its original warehouse space, to a warehouse space near Manhattan Regional Airport. The expansion increased the brewery's capacity from a Tallgrass record 365,000 gallons produced in 2013, to the ability to brew 3 million gallons per year. At the same time, Tallgrass began developing a brewpub, called Tallgrass Taphouse on Poyntz Road in downtown Manhattan.

Scarab Sages

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Raven is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in a special insert in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980), and was created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez. The daughter of a demon father (Trigon) and human mother (Arella), Raven is an empath who can teleport and control her "soul-self", which can fight physically, as well as act as Raven's eyes and ears away from her physical body. She is a prominent member of the superhero team Teen Titans. The character also goes by the alias Rachel Roth.


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Aberzombie wrote:
The brewery was founded by Jeff Gill in 2006. Gill was a former geologist, who had learned brewing as a homebrewer.

I can personally attest that we geologists are very big into homebrewing.

Scarab Sages

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The Audubon Zoo is a zoo located in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is part of the Audubon Nature Institute which also manages the Aquarium of the Americas. The zoo covers 58 acres (23 ha) and is home to 2,000 animals. It is located in a section of Audubon Park in Uptown New Orleans, on the Mississippi River side of Magazine Street. The zoo and park are named in honor of artist and naturalist John James Audubon who lived in New Orleans starting in 1821.


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During pre-production, director Guillermo del Toro approached actor BRIAN BLESSED to play the role of Thorin Oakenshield in Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit. However, due to disputes between del Toro and studio executives, del Toro left the project, leaving producer Jackson to direct the film (2012's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), which ultimately starred Richard Armitage as Thorin.


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The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary offers the word "elvish" as an antiquated synonym for "ill-tempered, surly." Other synonyms on the list include "crouse," "apirsmart," and "thrawn-mowit."


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Related to my earlier posting about ghost words and misprints, the word "sneeze" is a linguistic alternation of the Middle English fnese due to misreading or misprinting (after the initial fn- had become unfamiliar).


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Apirsmart...


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when you see a bald eagle cry on tv, chances are pretty good it's a red tailed hawk doing a voice over. Bald eagles sound like a giant seagull

Scarab Sages

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Brainiac is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly as an adversary of Superman. The character first appeared in Action Comics #242 (July 1958), and was created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino.

Brainiac is typically depicted as an extraterrestrial android. He is one of Superman's primary enemies, and is responsible for shrinking and stealing Kandor, the capital city of Superman's home planet Krypton. Due to multiple revisions of DC's continuity, several variations of Brainiac have appeared. Most incarnations of Brainiac depict him as a green-skinned being in humanoid form. He is bald, with a set of linked electrode-like objects (sometimes glowing) protruding from his skull.

The character's name appears to be a portmanteau of the word brain and the initialism ENIAC, the name of an early computer. In 2009, Brainiac was ranked as IGN's 17th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
when you see a bald eagle cry on tv, chances are pretty good it's a red tailed hawk doing a voice over. Bald eagles sound like a giant seagull

See my earlier post for relevant links.


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The slang term "misle" (based on the past tense of the English verb "to mislead")is used by some writers and editors to refer to a mispronunciation of a word based on its spelling.

Some examples of misles are TUCK-son /tʌkˈsʌn/ (Tucson, pronounced TOO-sahn /ˈtuːsɒn/), in-FRARE-d /ɪnˈfrɛrd/ (infrared, pronounced in-fra-RED /ɪnfɹəˈɹɛd/), WARP-lanes /wɔrp leɪnz/ (warplanes, pronounced WAR-planes /ˈwɔrˌpleɪnz/), and bi-OP-ic /baɪ.ˈɒ.pɪk/ (biopic, pronounced BIO-pic /ˈbaɪ.oʊ.pɪk/).


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David M Mallon wrote:
Related to my earlier posting about ghost words and misprints, the word "sneeze" is a linguistic alternation of the Middle English fnese due to misreading or misprinting (after the initial fn- had become unfamiliar).

Possibly related, the Swedish word for huffing is "fnysa."


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Kajehase wrote:
David M Mallon wrote:
Related to my earlier posting about ghost words and misprints, the word "sneeze" is a linguistic alternation of the Middle English fnese due to misreading or misprinting (after the initial fn- had become unfamiliar).
Possibly related, the Swedish word for huffing is "fnysa."

Quite possible, given that they're both Germanic languages.

Scarab Sages

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The Tiger I was a German heavy tank of World War II deployed from 1942 in Africa and Europe usually in independent heavy tank battalions. Its final designation was Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf. E often shortened to Tiger. The Tiger I gave the Wehrmacht its first armoured fighting vehicle that mounted the 8.8 cm KwK 36 gun (not to be confused with the 8.8 cm Flak 36). 1,347 were built between August 1942 and August 1944. Production was phased out in favour of the Tiger II.

While the Tiger I has been called an outstanding design for its time, it was over-engineered, using expensive materials and labour-intensive production methods. The Tiger was prone to certain types of track failures and breakdowns, and was limited in range by its high fuel consumption. It was expensive to maintain, but generally mechanically reliable. It was also difficult to transport, and vulnerable to immobilization when mud, ice and snow froze between its overlapping and interleaved Schachtellaufwerk-pattern road wheels, often jamming them solid. This was a problem on the Eastern Front in the muddy rasputitsa season and during extreme periods of cold.

The tank was given its nickname "Tiger" by Ferdinand Porsche, and the Roman numeral was added after the later Tiger II entered production. The initial designation was Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung H (‘‘Panzer VI version H’’, abbreviated PzKpfw VI Ausf. H) where 'H' denoted Henschel as the designer/manufacturer. It was classed with ordnance inventory designation SdKfz 182. The tank was later redesignated as PzKpfw VI Ausf. E in March 1943, with ordnance inventory designation SdKfz 181.

Today, only a handful of Tigers survive in museums and exhibitions worldwide. The Bovington Tank Museum's Tiger 131 is currently the only one restored to running order.

Scarab Sages

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The Chevrolet Camaro is an American automobile manufactured by Chevrolet, classified as a pony car and some versions also as a muscle car. It went on sale on September 29, 1966, for the 1967 model year and was designed as a competing model to the Ford Mustang. The car shared its platform and major components with the Pontiac Firebird, also introduced for 1967.

Four distinct generations of the Camaro were developed before production ended in 2002. The nameplate was revived on a concept car that evolved into the fifth-generation Camaro; production started on March 16, 2009.


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you can make a magnetic field strong enough to levitate a frog

Scarab Sages

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Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.

Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.


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Rolling is a type of motion that combines rotation (commonly, of an axially symmetric object) and translation of that object with respect to a surface (either one or the other moves), such that, if ideal conditions exist, the two are in contact with each other without sliding.


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The words "ingenious" and "ingenuity," while both having similar meanings in English, are derived from two different Latin sources. "Ingenious," meaning "displaying inventiveness" is derived from the Latin ingenium ("innate quality"), and is related to the English words "engine" and "genius." "Ingenuity," meaning "ability to solve problems," is derived from the Latin ingenuitas ("nobility"), and is related to the English word "ingenuous." Possibly due to conflation of the two similar-sounding terms, the "problem solving" aspect of "ingenuity" has replaced the older meaning of "straightforwardness."

Silver Crusade

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Aberzombie wrote:

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government during the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.

Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

His full name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.

Scarab Sages

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The two kinds of white alligators are albino and leucistic.


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Aberzombie wrote:
The two kinds of white alligators are albino and leucistic.

That goes for pretty much any animal, I believe.


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DungeonmasterCal wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
The two kinds of white alligators are albino and leucistic.
That goes for pretty much any animal, I believe.

Indeed.

Albinism is the congenital absence of any pigmentation or coloration in an animal or plant. Albino animals have characteristic pink or red eyes because the lack of pigment in the iris allows the blood vessels of the retina to be visible.

Leucism is a condition in which there is partial loss of pigmentation in an animal resulting in white, pale, or patchy coloration of the skin, hair, feathers, scales or cuticle, but not the eyes. More common than a complete absence of pigment cells is localized or incomplete hypopigmentation, resulting in irregular patches of white on an animal that otherwise has normal colouring and patterning. This partial leucism is known as a "pied" or "piebald" effect.


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The sample image for "Human" in Wikipedia's "Mammal Diversity" hyperlink image map on their page for "Mammal" is a photograph of a meeting between United States President Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.


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David M Mallon wrote:
Possibly due to conflation of the two similar-sounding terms, the "problem solving" aspect of "ingenuity" has replaced the older meaning of "straightforwardness."

There's a relict of the older meaning in the remaining word "disingenuous," however.

Scarab Sages

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DungeonmasterCal wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
The two kinds of white alligators are albino and leucistic.
That goes for pretty much any animal, I believe.

That's what I get for a quick cut and paste job.


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Due to strict German censorship laws, the logo of American hard rock band KISS appears differently in the German editions of their albums and merchandise, due to the final "SS" of the band's name closely resembling the insignia of the Nazi Schutzstaffel paramilitary organization.


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At the time of his retirement in 1989, American basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born as Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. in 1947) was the NBA's all-time leader in points scored, games played, minutes played, field goals made, field goal attempts, blocked shots, defensive rebounds, and personal fouls. To this day, he remains the all-time leading scorer in the NBA, and is ranked third all-time in both rebounds and blocks.

Abdul-Jabbar has also been an actor (notably in the films Game Of Death (1978) and Airplane! (1980)), a basketball coach, and a best-selling author. In 2012, he was selected by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be a U.S. global cultural ambassador. In 2016, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

Scarab Sages

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Big Country is a Scottish rock band formed in Dunfermline, Fife, in 1981.

The height of the band's popularity was in the early 1980s, although it retained a cult following for many years after. The band's music was most recognisable for the sounds it infused with Scottish folk and martial music styles, as well as for playing and engineering their guitar driven sound to evoke the inspirational spirit of bagpipes, fiddles and other traditional folk instruments.


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Aberzombie wrote:
The two kinds of white alligators are albino and leucistic.

WAS DIPPED IN BLEACH. OW.

Silver Crusade

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Bleached Otyugh wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
The two kinds of white alligators are albino and leucistic.
WAS DIPPED IN BLEACH. OW.

Or ya fought a Green Dragon. Same outcome.


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Long, long ago I ran a game where the players encountered a white dragon. Imagine their surprise when they found out it was an albino red dragon.


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In another game I kept telling they to be on the lookout for a particular foe. They kept thinking I was saying "White Dwarf", when it reality it was a "Wight Dwarf". They didn't see that one coming at all until it was too late.

Scarab Sages

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DungeonmasterCal wrote:
Long, long ago I ran a game where the players encountered a white dragon. Imagine their surprise when they found out it was an albino red dragon.

Somewhere, once, I saw it done as the PCs stumble on a survivor whose last words tell of being attacked by a "wight dragon".

Scarab Sages

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Gumbo is a stew that originated in southern Louisiana during the 18th century. It consists primarily of a strongly-flavored stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener, and what Louisianians call the "Holy Trinity" of vegetables, namely celery, bell peppers, and onions. Gumbo is often categorized by the type of thickener used, the vegetable okra, the Choctaw spice filé powder (dried and ground sassafras leaves), or roux, the French base made of flour and fat. The dish likely derived its name from either a word from a Bantu language for okra (ki ngombo) or the Choctaw word for filé (kombo).

Several different varieties exist. Creole gumbo generally contains shellfish, and a dark roux, file, or both. Cajun gumbo is generally based on a dark roux and is made with shellfish or fowl. Sausage or ham is often added to gumbos of either variety. After the base is prepared, vegetables are cooked down, and then meat is added. The dish simmers for a minimum of three hours, with shellfish and some spices added near the end. If desired, filé powder is added after the pot is removed from heat. Gumbo is traditionally served over rice. A third, lesser-known variety, the meatless gumbo z'herbes, is essentially a gumbo of slow-cooked greens sometimes thickened with roux, with rice served on the side.

The dish combines ingredients and culinary practices of several cultures, including French, Spanish, German, West African, and Choctaw. Gumbo may have been based on traditional West African or native dishes, or may be a derivation of the French dish bouillabaisse. It was first described in 1802, and was listed in various cookbooks in the latter half of the 19th century. The dish gained more widespread popularity in the 1970s, after the United States Senate cafeteria added it to the menu in honor of Louisiana Senator Allen Ellender. The popularity of chef Paul Prudhomme in the 1980s spurred further interest in gumbo. The dish is the official cuisine of the state of Louisiana.


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...That the process of forced Japanese-American relocation began with Executive Order 9066?


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Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

Not enough sixes in that. :-)


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Ed Reppert wrote:
Not enough sixes in that. :-)

There are if you want to get rid of a bunch of Jedi.


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David M Mallon wrote:
Due to strict German censorship laws, the logo of American hard rock band KISS appears differently in the German editions of their albums and merchandise, due to the final "SS" of the band's name closely resembling the insignia of the Nazi Schutzstaffel paramilitary organization.

Closely? :) Kind of how the Sun is just a tad brighter in the sky than the full Moon?


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Ex-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had a full set of Osmonds LPs, according to a member of the Osmonds.

Scarab Sages

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The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), also known as the Komodo monitor, is a large species of lizard found in the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, Gili Motang, and Padar. A member of the monitor lizard family Varanidae, it is the largest living species of lizard, growing to a maximum length of 3 metres (10 ft) in rare cases and weighing up to approximately 70 kilograms (150 lb).

Their unusually large size has been attributed to island gigantism, since no other carnivorous animals fill the niche on the islands where they live.[6][7] However, recent research suggests the large size of Komodo dragons may be better understood as representative of a relict population of very large varanid lizards that once lived across Indonesia and Australia, most of which, along with other megafauna, died out after the Pleistocene. Fossils very similar to V. komodoensis have been found in Australia dating to greater than 3.8 million years ago, and its body size remained stable on Flores, one of the handful of Indonesian islands where it is currently found, over the last 900,000 years, "a time marked by major faunal turnovers, extinction of the island's megafauna, and the arrival of early hominids by 880 ka [kiloannums]."

As a result of their size, these lizards dominate the ecosystems in which they live.[8] Komodo dragons hunt and ambush prey including invertebrates, birds, and mammals. It has been claimed that they have a venomous bite; there are two glands in the lower jaw which secrete several toxic proteins. The biological significance of these proteins is disputed, but the glands have been shown to secrete an anticoagulant. Komodo dragon group behaviour in hunting is exceptional in the reptile world. The diet of big Komodo dragons mainly consists of deer, though they also eat considerable amounts of carrion. Komodo dragons also occasionally attack humans.

Mating begins between May and August, and the eggs are laid in September. About 20 eggs are deposited in abandoned megapode nests or in a self-dug nesting hole. The eggs are incubated for seven to eight months, hatching in April, when insects are most plentiful. Young Komodo dragons are vulnerable and therefore dwell in trees, safe from predators and cannibalistic adults. They take 8 to 9 years to mature, and are estimated to live up to 30 years.

Komodo dragons were first recorded by Western scientists in 1910. Their large size and fearsome reputation make them popular zoo exhibits. In the wild, their range has contracted due to human activities, and they are listed as vulnerable by the IUCN. They are protected under Indonesian law, and a national park, Komodo National Park, was founded to aid protection efforts.

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