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Theconiel wrote:
David M Mallon wrote:
Over the course of his career, American trombonist and bandleader A. Glenn Miller (1904-1944) scored 16 number-one records, as well as 69 top-ten hit singles, more than Elvis Presley (38 top-tens) or the Beatles (33 top-tens) did in their careers.

In 1942, Glenn Miller (age 38, too old to be drafted) joined the U.S. Army, and was transferred to the Army Air Corps. His plane was lost over the English Channel on December 14, 1944.

How I wish he had survived the war. I love his music.

In the 2019 one-shot comic book War Is Hell #1 (part of Marvel Comics' 80th anniversary collection), one of the included stories is based around a jazz-loving Nazi fighter ace and the disappearance of an obvious Glenn Miller stand-in.

Scarab Sages

Meet the new 'Tank-Man'.

Maybe it's politics, but who cares if it's in a place where Paizo's products are illegal?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:

Meet the new 'Tank-Man'.

Maybe it's politics, but who cares if it's in a place where Paizo's products are illegal?

can't wait for this. :)

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Anteon is the largest genus in the subfamily Anteoninae of the family Dryinidae, it occurs globally and there is a current total of 423 species described. The species in the genus Anteon are parasitoids of leafhoppers from the family Cicadellidae. The female wasps of the family Dryinidae almost always possess a a chelate protarsus, as do females of species within Anteon. The chelae are used to capture and immobilise the host leafhopper to allow the wasp to oviposit and feed on it.


Aberzombie wrote:
Anteon is the largest genus in the subfamily Anteoninae of the family Dryinidae, it occurs globally and there is a current total of 423 species described. The species in the genus Anteon are parasitoids of leafhoppers from the family Cicadellidae. The female wasps of the family Dryinidae almost always possess a a chelate protarsus, as do females of species within Anteon. The chelae are used to capture and immobilise the host leafhopper to allow the wasp to oviposit and feed on it.

Wow! thanks for the info! :)


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Franz123 wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
Anteon is the largest genus in the subfamily Anteoninae of the family Dryinidae, it occurs globally and there is a current total of 423 species described. The species in the genus Anteon are parasitoids of leafhoppers from the family Cicadellidae. The female wasps of the family Dryinidae almost always possess a a chelate protarsus, as do females of species within Anteon. The chelae are used to capture and immobilise the host leafhopper to allow the wasp to oviposit and feed on it.
Wow! thanks for the info! :)

Indeed.

Also, apropos of nothing, wasps are complete a%@$+%!s.

Scarab Sages

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Scrooge McDuck is a fictional character created in 1947 by Carl Barks as a work-for-hire for The Walt Disney Company. Scrooge is an elderly Scottish anthropomorphic Pekin duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a red or blue frock coat, top hat, pince-nez glasses, and spats. He is portrayed in animations as speaking with a Scottish accent.

Scarab Sages

Science isn't AKA "natural philosophy" for nothing: Outdoorsman and conservationist John Muir was also an inventor!

Scarab Sages

Tea was popularized in Britain by Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, after she wed Charles II.

Scarab Sages

The Wild West: Where not only are the mice werewolves - the rats are Kung-Fu masters!

Scarab Sages

Essilor International S.A. is a French-based international ophthalmic optics company that designs, manufactures and markets lenses to correct or protect eyesight. Its headquarters is based in Charenton-le-Pont (near Paris), France. Essilor is quoted on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange. It is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 share index.

Essilor is responsible for creating Varilux, the world's first progressive lens which corrects presbyopia and allows clear vision in the wearer's near, intermediate and far vision. The company formed from the merger of ophthalmic firms Essel and Silor in 1972. Its activities are largely focused on research and development. It is the world's largest manufacturer of ophthalmic lenses.

In January 2017 Essilor announced a combination with Italian eyewear giant Luxottica. On 1 October 2018, the new holding company EssilorLuxottica is born, resulting in combined market capitalization of approximately €57 billion.

Scarab Sages

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Garbage is an American rock band formed in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1993. The band consists of Scottish musician and lead singer Shirley Manson and American musicians Duke Erikson, Steve Marker, and Butch Vig. All four members are involved in songwriting and production. Garbage has sold over 17 million albums worldwide.

The band's eponymous debut album was critically acclaimed upon its release, selling over four million copies and acheiving double platinum certification in the UK, US and Australia. It was accompanied by a string of increasingly successful singles from 1995 to 1996, including "Stupid Girl" and "Only Happy When It Rains". Follow-up Version 2.0, released in 1998 after a year in production, was equally successful, topping the UK Albums Chart and receiving two Grammy Award nominations. Garbage followed this by performing and co-producing the theme song to the nineteenth James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999).

Despite critical acclaim, Garbage's third album Beautiful Garbage failed to match the commercial success achieved by its predecessors. Garbage quietly disbanded amidst the troubled production of their fourth album Bleed Like Me, but regrouped to complete the album, which was released in 2005 and peaked at a career-high number four in the US. The band cut short their concert tour of Bleed Like Me, announcing an "indefinite hiatus", emphasizing that they had not broken up, but wished to pursue personal interests. The hiatus was briefly interrupted in 2007, when Garbage recorded new tracks for their greatest hits retrospective Absolute Garbage. Garbage ultimately reunited in 2011, and self-released 2012's Not Your Kind of People to positive reviews via their label Stunvolume. Their sixth album Strange Little Birds was released in 2016.

Liberty's Edge

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I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Tea was popularized in Britain by Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, after she wed Charles II.

No, no, no. Tea was first brought to Britain by Asterix and Obelix. It quickly replaced hot water as their national drink.

Scarab Sages

The Body Snatchers is a 1955 science fiction novel by American writer Jack Finney, originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954, which describes real-life Mill Valley, California (called in the original film by the fictional name of "Santa Mira") being invaded by seeds that have drifted to Earth from space. The seeds, grown from plantlike pods, replace sleeping people with perfect physical duplicates with all the same knowledge, memories, scars, etc. but are incapable of human emotion or feeling. The human victims disappear forever.

The duplicates live only five years and cannot sexually reproduce; consequently, if unstopped, they will quickly turn Earth into a dead planet and move on to the next world. One of the duplicate invaders claims this is what humans do — use up resources, wipe out indigenous populations, and destroy ecosystems in the name of survival.

The novel has been adapted for the screen four times; the first film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956, the second in 1978, the third in 1993, and the fourth in 2007.

Unlike the first three film adaptations, which elected for darker, far more dystopian narratives, the novel contains an optimistic ending, with the aliens voluntarily vacating after deciding that they cannot tolerate the type of resistance they see in the main characters.

Scarab Sages

Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (often shortened to Dolby Labs and known simply as Dolby) is an American company specializing in audio noise reduction and audio encoding/compression. Dolby licenses its technologies to consumer electronics manufacturers.

Dolby Labs was founded by American Ray Dolby (1933–2013) in London, United Kingdom, in 1965. In that same year, he invented the Dolby Noise Reduction System, a form of audio signal processing for reducing the background hissing sound on audio tape recordings. His first U.S. patent on the technology was filed in 1969, four years later. The method was first used by Decca Records in the UK.

He moved the company headquarters to the United States (San Francisco, California) in 1976. The first product Dolby Labs produced was the Dolby 301 unit which incorporated Type A Dolby Noise Reduction, a compander based noise reduction system. These units were intended for use in professional recording studios.

Scarab Sages

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From The Laboratories of Dr. Obvious: Cats do indeed recognize their names - and will react if and how they goddamn feel like doing so.

Scarab Sages

The Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) is an 832-acre (337 ha) manufacturing complex owned by NASA in New Orleans East, a district within New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States. Organizationally it is part of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and is currently a multi-tenant complex to allow commercial and government contractors, as well as government agencies, to use the site.

MAF is one of the largest manufacturing plants in the world with 43 environmentally controlled acres—174,000 m2 (1,870,000 sq ft)—under one roof, and it employs more than 4,200 people. From September 1961 to the end of the Apollo program in December 1972 the site was utilized by Chrysler Corporation to build the first stages of the Saturn I and Saturn IB, later joined by Boeing Corporation to build the first stage of the Saturn V rockets. From September 5, 1973, to September 20, 2010, the factory was used for the construction of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tanks by Martin Marietta Corporation, Denver Colorado.


Despite spending many months on the front lines and participating in three separate combat parachute jumps* (a rarity in the Second World War), Captain Lewis Nixon III (1918-1995) never fired his weapon in combat during his service in the United States Army, and was never wounded (though he did take a German round through his helmet). After his death, Nixon was portrayed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) by actor Ron Livingston.

Captain Nixon's grandfather, Lewis Nixon I (1861-1940) was a naval architect and politician who designed the United States' first modern battleships and supervised the construction of the US's first submarines. The elder Nixon also served briefly as leader of Tammany Hall, and was part of the commission overseeing the construction of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City.

*Operation Overlord (Battle of Normandy), Operation Market Garden (Netherlands campaign), and Operation Varsity (invasion of Germany)

Scarab Sages

The vigilantes of Acción Ortográfica Quito are the heroes Ecuador's capital deserves.

Scarab Sages

Dairy Queen (DQ) is a chain of soft serve ice cream and fast-food restaurants owned by International Dairy Queen, Inc., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. International Dairy Queen, Inc., also owns Orange Julius and Karmelkorn.

The first DQ restaurant was located in Joliet, Illinois. It was operated by Sherb Noble and opened for business on June 22, 1940. It served a variety of frozen products, such as soft serve ice cream.

The company's corporate offices are located in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, Minnesota.


It was a sort of social hub for the small town that I lived near.

Scarab Sages

Did You Know...how The NewsTM gets made?

Scarab Sages

If it's vulcanized rubber, it's a single, huge molecule.

Scarab Sages

The summit of Mt. Everest is made of marine limestone - meaning the highest point on Earth was once at the bottom of the ocean.

Scarab Sages

Turkish sanitation workers have managed to build an extensive library out of books salvaged from the trash.

Scarab Sages

No, you're not just "reading" emotion into your dog's expression - they meant it to be there.

Scarab Sages

Kazakhstan is the home of the apple...

...and of Humanity's first spaceport!


David M Mallon wrote:
Contrary to popular belief, Dick VanDyke is still alive (he's 90 years old).

Contrary to popular belief, actor Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch Demsky in 1916 in Amsterdam, New York) is still alive. As of 19 April 2019, Mr. Douglas is 102 years old, and is the fourth-oldest "Golden Age" Hollywood star still alive.

Richard Wayne "Dick" VanDyke (b. 1925), the subject of the earlier post, is also still alive and well at age 93.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.
David M Mallon wrote:
Contrary to popular belief, actor Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch Demsky in 1916 in Amsterdam, New York) is still alive. As of 19 April 2019, Mr. Douglas is 102 years old, and is the fourth-oldest "Golden Age" Hollywood star still alive.

I actually covered him upthread, too

The three oldest are (in ascending order): Olivia de Havilland (age 102, birthday JUL 1 to Douglas's DEC 9), Norman Lloyd (age 104), and Julie Gibson (age 105).

No business like show-business, I tell 'ya....

Scarab Sages

Before they were famous...

...Harland "Formerly the Most Famous" Sanders was a gunslinger...

...Sir Patrick Stewart was a pioneer in fabricated news...

...Jorge Mario Bergoglio AKA Pope Francis was a bouncer...

...Christopher Walken was a circus lion tamer (did he have his own hat?)...

...and Michael Keaton ran the trolley on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Donald Allen Wollheim (October 1, 1914 – November 2, 1990) was an American science fiction editor, publisher, writer, and fan. As an author, he published under his own name as well as under pseudonyms, including David Grinnell.

A founding member of the Futurians, he was a leading influence on science fiction development and fandom in the 20th-century United States.

Ursula K. Le Guin called Wollheim "the tough, reliable editor of Ace Books, in the Late Pulpalignean Era, 1966 and ’67, " which is when he published her first two novels, in an Ace Double.

Scarab Sages

The Igbo people of Nigeria so revere the gentle-natured ball python (native to the region) that they customarily provide dead ones with their own tiny coffins and short funerals.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

The elephant people of South Africa so revere the gentle-natured Lawrence Anthony (native to the region) that they provided him with an impromptu 2-day funeral upon his death.

Scarab Sages

The Turkish embassy in Washington, DC played a key role in desegregating the local jazz scene.

Scarab Sages

Sir Anthony "Hannibal" Hopkins is also a waltz composer.

Scarab Sages

Inuits are among the best parents in the world.

Scarab Sages

Flowering plants, on the other hand, appear to respond better to a less "spare the rod" approach.

Scarab Sages

Falling coconuts kill 150 people a year.

Scarab Sages

In the event of a water landing, the original Volkswagen Beetle WAS a (temporary) flotation device.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Perhaps what Ernest Scribbler was *really* writing in the "Killer Joke" sketch was the script to A Fish Called Wanda.

Scarab Sages

You can keep a horse's water trough clean by putting a live-in sanitation staff of goldfish in it.

Scarab Sages

Sleep deprivation can actually HELP those who are suffering from serious depression.

Scarab Sages

Idea for a Saturday morning cartoon: Evil ecocidal starfish VS heroic acid-shooting robots...!

Scarab Sages

The sound of a "growling stomach" is actually the sound of intestinal motion.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
You can keep a horse's water trough clean by putting a live-in sanitation staff of goldfish in it.

I learned this from watching the Peaky (fookin') Blinders.

Scarab Sages

John Napier 698 wrote:
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Do a Google search for "Count Dracula"...and this is the image they lead the character's profile with.
*Severe eye twitching, followed by a lengthy stream of profanity* No. Just, no.

If you liked that, this is the image they lead the generic entry for 'vampire' with.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
John Napier 698 wrote:
I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Do a Google search for "Count Dracula"...and this is the image they lead the character's profile with.
*Severe eye twitching, followed by a lengthy stream of profanity* No. Just, no.
If you liked that, this is the image they lead the generic entry for 'vampire' with.

What's wrong with Grandpa Munster?

Scarab Sages

Going Out With a *Boff*: Martin Luther King Jr.'s final great battle alongside his fellow civil rights leaders was...a pillow fight.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

A Modern-Day Tantalus: A prolific (and decidely wasteful) deer-poacher was recently sentenced to a year in prison...during which time he is further condemned to watch Disney's Bambi at least 1/month.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Theconiel wrote:
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.

Or maybe the members of G.I. Joe are just dedicated to excellence in process engineering.

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