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Pure gold has no practical value whatsoever. It's too soft to do anything with it and has to be diluted, or alloyed, like iron, to make it workable -- typically with copper.

Martin M Goldwyn, in his book How a Fly Walks Upside Down, recounts a suggestion from a student that pancake flour and popcorn would make the perfect alloy.

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Why do we have wisdom teeth?

Because the American Dental Association lobbied for them, I concluded after reviewing the bill from my latest brush with dentistry.

There are so many dentists with the skills of a coal miner and the heart of an accountant, and so few wisdom teeth.

Before microwaves and frozen dinners, people had to really chomp their uncooked food with what are also called "third molars." But today wisdom teeth are vestigial.

You don't need them for a guacamole burger. And they get infected and have to come out. Which is where your dentist and credit card come in.They're called wisdom teeth because they're the last teeth you get.

You're older and smarter than you were when you got your first teeth. So why not call gray hair, wisdom hair; middle age paunch, wisdom fat; and the forgetfulness that begins in your 40s, wisdom whiteout?

Why do whales frequently beach themselves?

Not because they're slackers. They usually end up on some desolate beach. If they were just looking for downtime, they would show up more often in places like
Cancun, Miami or Hilton Head.

Whales navigate with their own version of sonar. They bounce sound off objects, including the ocean bottom, and calculate their distance from these objects by the time it takes for the sound to return. With this system, they usually get along quite swimmingly.

Shallow water with a sandy bottom near beaches presents a problem. The whale's sound waves can get tossed back and forth like ping-pong balls between the bottom and the nearby surface of the water, delaying their return.

Why do llamas spit?

This refers to those big, oh so cute and furry animals from South America.

The answer is, briefly, llamas spit to communicate.

Believe me, if they could send an email instead I am sure they would. But they can't, and spitting is a direct way of sending a message - in your face, so to speak.

If the message is relatively benign, they use plain spit. One llama could be telling another, "not tonight, honey, I have a headache." But if they're angry or afraid, they expectorate smelly green slime.

TAX DAY Special ***

Interesting Things That Have Been Taxed

Bachelors (England in 1695 A.D., and Missouri in 1820 A.D.)

Beards (Russia, 1702 A.D.) Cooking Oil (Ancient Egypt, approximately 2000 B.C.)

Souls (Russia, approximately 1682 A.D.)

Urine (Rome, 1 A.D.)

Besides taxing beards and souls, Peter the Great of Russia also taxed: hats, boots, beehives, basements, chimneys, food, clothing, birth, marriage, and burial.

Moving objects are affected by the Earth's rotation. This is called the "Coriolis effect."

In the Northern Hemisphere, such objects are deflected to the right. That would explain the conservative trend in recent Republican campaigns.

Men and women each have about five million hairs on their body. About 125,000 of these hairs grow on the head at the rate of .4 inch per month. The summer sunshine increases this rate slightly. \

True Facts to read and forget.

A cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

China has more English speakers than the United States.

Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck.

More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.

Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

Why is it called a "hamburger" if it doesn't contain ham?

At first glance, it seems that the word "hamburger" is a combination of the words "ham" and "burger." Therefore, one naturally assumes that a hamburger is a burger that contains ham.

But the word "hamburger" actually traces its roots back to Hamburg Germany, where people used to eat a similar food called the "Hamburg steak." Eventually, the Hamburg steak made its way to the United States, where people shortened its name to "hamburger."

Is there any difference between seraphim and cherubim?

There's always a pecking order, even among angels. I'm not just talking about wingspread, although physical characteristics come into play.

First, there are enough kinds of angels to field a baseball team. The nine types, or choirs, in descending order, are seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues powers, principalities, archangels and (plain vanilla) angels. Seraphim rule the roost and have three pairs of wings, while cherubim never have more than two. It's not exactly like Hertz and Avis. Even if the cherubim try harder, they're not going any higher.