Dear hev: I can't find anything about it on the Internet, but when sound movies first began, there was a lousy first movie (cowboys and Indians),a serial, an intermission during which everybody went to buy more popcorn,while the projectionist rewound the film, and then the feature. Frequently the serial was one called "College Humor". Its theme song started " We're working our way through college, to gain a lot of knowledge that we'll never, ever use again....."
Nonsense 101 is still being taught in many places.

Funny - I just received a solicitation from the theatre department in which I studied for my degree. They were urgently calling upon all alums for testimonial quotes for their new marketing campaign to prospective students. Being a realist, my submission was "Everyone may say you can't make a living in the theatre - they may be right. Even so, the Willamette University Theatre department provides an excellent foundation for an interesting life."

I'll let you all know when the royalty checks start rolling in.

While I'm waiting, that site will surely keep me entertained. Thanks for sharing it, hev - right up my alley!

Julius Caesar's hat size.

Julius Caesar's hat size [unusually large, as I recall]

Of course -- which is why his birthing was by the eponymous Caesarean section.

Dear Keiva: Quite a while ago I posted from official gynecology and obstetrical site that Caesar was not born that way. And the spelling the site preferred was Cesarean.

Yet, the early history of cesarean section remains shrouded in myth and is of dubious accuracy. Even the origin of
"cesarean" has apparently been distorted over time. It is commonly believed to be derived from the surgical birth of
Julius Caesar, however this seems unlikely since his mother Aurelia is reputed to have lived to hear of her son's
invasion of Britain. At that time the procedure was performed only when the mother was dead or dying, as an attempt
to save the child for a state wishing to increase its population. Roman law under Caesar decreed that all women who
were so fated by childbirth must be cut open; hence, cesarean. Other possible Latin origins include the verb
"caedare," meaning to cut, and the term "caesones" that was applied to infants born by postmortem operations.
Ultimately, though, we cannot be sure of where or when the term cesarean was derived. Until the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the procedure was known as cesarean operation. This began to change following the
publication in 1598 of Jacques Guillimeau's book on midwifery in which he introduced the term "section."
Increasingly thereafter "section" replaced "operation."

Interesting, dr. bill. bartleby says this term comes "[f]rom the traditional belief that Julius Caesar (or his eponymous ancestor) was born by this operation", but I frankly find your explanation more persuasive.

Here's some interesting facts I came upon:

1. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have roduced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. (Hardly seems worth it.)

2. If you passed gas consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb. (Now that's more like it!)

3. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet. (O.M.G.!)

4. A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes. (I want to be a pig.)

5. A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death. (Creepy, But I'm still not over the pig.)

6. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour. (Do not try this at home...maybe at work.)

7. The male preying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off. (" Honey, I'm home. What the....?!" )

8. The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field. (30 minutes...can you imagine??)

9. The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. (What could be so tasty on the bottom of a pond?)

10. Some lions mate over 50 times a day. ( I still want to be a pig...quality over quantity.)

11. Butterflies taste with their feet. (Something I never wanted to know.)

12. Elephants are the only animal that cannot jump. (OK, so that's a good thing....enough holes in the earth as it is, do we need more!!!!)

13. A cat's urine glows under a black light. (I wonder who was paid to figure that out?)

14. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. (I know some people like that.)

15. Starfish have no brains. (I know some people like that too.)

16. Polar bears are left-handed. (Who knew? Who cares!)

17. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure. (What about that pig??!!!)

"and the pig got up and slowly walked away"

Thanks Max! Unfortunately, the thread you linked to is one that started and ended weeks before I came aBoard. I tried to click the link to the complete list, obviously it is much longer than the version I posted, but the link takes you to oblivion. Wish I could have read them, bet they were pretty funny.

And here's the link to our first thread about left-handed polar bears, and so forth. (I recommend this one.)
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=3658

OH, Jackie! Thanks for the link! I love these old threads, but there are sooooooo many, would take too long to search for the best of them.

Here's a true useless fact from radiation biology: The dose of total-body radiation it takes to kill a person (so called LD50, a dose which is lethal to 50% of the people who receive it) is only enough to heat a cup of coffee by about 1°C. It's an interesting testament to the fact that it's the WAY radiation does damage, not AMOUNT of energy, that is dangerous.

You can figure it out for yourself if you're so inclined: This dose is 4 Gy = 4 J/kg. All you need is the weight of an average person (~70 kg), the heat capacity of water (4184 J/kg), and an estimate of the volume of a cup of water (0.25 kg). Presto!

Edit: Ok, I calculated it. It's more like 0.27°C (0.46°F).

apropos of
7. The male preying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body :

"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea
searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral
to cling to and make its home for life.

When it finds its spot and takes root
it doesn’t need its brain any more
so it eats it.

It’s rather like getting tenure."

-- Daniel Dennett, Consciousness