How do seedless grapes reproduce?

You know, this is a family mailing list, so I can't exactly draw you a picture, if you get my drift. But if you'll usher any minors in the house out of the room inwhich you keep your computer, I'll do my best to inform, with discretion. And I promise there will be no childish jokes about how before there were seedless grapes, it was the pits.

Actually, I was overreacting because seedless grapes reproduce without sex. (Borrring!) Did someone ever give you a cutting from a plant so that you could start your own? The process involved is regeneration, in which you can grow the whole plant by transplanting only a part of it. The original seedless grapes were mutations that were perpetuated via cuttings. It's still done that way.

People in the Dominican Republic, where Christopher Columbus landed, think his name is jinxed and won't mention it. There have been earthquakes, plane crashes and other accidents associated with occasions honoring the explorer.

According to Prof. Anders Henriksson, college students say and write the darnedest things.

For example, that Noah's wife was Joan of Ark, Plato taught Harris Tottle, and the Germans used the military technique called Blintzkrieg.

How does the B-2 bomber avoid detection?

The B-2 bomber has a wing span of 172 feet (52 meters), yet its radar "signature" (apparent size on a radar screen) is as big as that of a bird. Not only that, but
it makes very little sound and is difficult to see, from the ground or from the air.

The bomber's construction uses graphite composites, which trap radar waves inside the plane, and its outer surfaces contain no flat parts and no right angles, which would reflect radar.

The jet's hot exhaust is mixed with cool air before being released, foiling heat-seeking missiles. Its engines are also hidden deep inside the plane, where their noise is muffled by the structure of the aircraft.

Is the appendix our body's only vestigial structure?

If some of the people I've had to deal with lately are any indicator, the brain might qualify. Seriously, though, there are several apparently useless parts in the human body. Your nictating membrane is one.

But the most interesting vestigial part is the only bone in your body that does not appear to have been assigned a task. The coccyx begins as four small bones that fuse into one as you mature. But it has no more use as a solo act than it did as a quartet. The coccyx is what we commonly call our "tail bone." It may indeed be the remnant of the tail we once had, but in our time, it just sits there.

There's a story about an MIT student who spent an entire summer going to the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes throwing birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the field.

At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard home football team, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle, and the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get off of the field.

Exactly what do we mean by "the exception that proves the rule?"

We've all heard and probably repeated this expression many times. But can you explain it? When I say it slowly, paying attention to what I'm saying, it sounds
like nonsense. An exception undercuts, it doesn't prove a rule.

So why have we been duped into repeating this gibberish? Because it made sense at one time when the word "proves" meant something other than what it usually means today. It used to mean, "test," from the Latin, probare, "prove." The same root gives us the word "probe," also a test. And an exception does test a rule. If the exception is valid, the rule ain't.

It takes millions of nerve cells to transmit pain from the spot that hurts to your brain. Given its complex path, it's amazing just how quickly the message travels. At its peak, pain can do 350 feet per second - often in a hospital zone!

Mardi Gras is the period lasting anywhere from a day to two weeks before Ash Wednesday, a last fling before Lent.

If you know that the name comes from the French for "Fat Tuesday," you get only 25 out of a possible 100 points because you don't know the half of it.

The ancient Romans had an anything-goes spring feast called Lupercalia. Take my word for it, anything, but anything, went.

The early Church had to compete, and so allowed for a toned down version of Lupercalia called "carnivalere" - "goodbye to the flesh," in Latin - just before the meatless Lent.

It's the source of our word, carnival. The last day of carnival - Shrove Tuesday - came to be called "Fat Tuesday" because of the medieval Parisian custom of leading an ox, crowned with a fillet stuck on its horns, through the streets.

Published in March 15 Blue Springs, Missouri, Examiner:

ST. LOUIS--The winning numbers drawn Tuesday night in the daily Missouri Lottery Pick 3 game were 9-9-9.

What's hotter than a jalapeno?

A habanero pepper is about twenty times hotter. The measurement of pepper potency is the Scoville Unit.

A bell pepper rings no bells at 100 Scoville Units, max.

The jalapeno can hit 3,000 units, and set off an alarm.

A typical habanero is a 275,000-unit scorcher.

Who invented the "Monopoly" game, and when?

No, not Bill Gates! His game is played on a desktop with two clicks and a curse, not a roll of the dice.

Nor was it Donald Trump, although imagine passing "GO in a stretch limo, landing on Boardwalk and having the wherewithal to put a real hotel on it.

Naturally, this real estate game in which even the meek can become moguls was invented during the Depression. Charles Darrow created it in Germantown, Pennsylvania and sold it to Parker Brothers in the mid-1930s.

Darrow used Atlantic City place names because he had a few good times there.

With more than 200 million sets sold since then, Monopoly has become part of American culture. Nieman Marcus even brought out a chocolate version in 1978.

"LASER." It's an acronym you use often, but do you know what it stands for? Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

This has created quite a crisis for school boards in some of the backwoods sections of America.

Rated G

Why are people's eye's often red in snapshots?

Well, if you photograph them just before the bar closes, you shouldn't be surprised. Under other circumstances, if they're your relatives and yours are anything like some of mine, don't even question this phenomenon. Use it to identify which are not of this
Earth.

If you want the scientific explanation, it's all in the retina, the light-sensitive membrane in your eye. It's not exactly a mirror so most of the time light does not reflect off of it. But the light from a camera's flash is so intense that it does come back at the camera's
lens. The red color is from the blood vessels in the membrane.

Why do we call extortion "blackmail?"

Do you tip your mailman at Christmas? You don't have to. But would you want your neighbor to "mistakenly" receive your Frederick's of Hollywood catalog? Accidents happen. How about those "toys" you ordered from that torrid website?

Actually, blackmail has nothing to do with the Post Office, which screws up as a matter of principle. It comes from "mal," Old English for tribute or rent.

Warlords in ancient Scotland used to force farmers to pay mal as protection. Pay it and you plant your crops in peace; don't pay it and we plant you and you rest in peace. Blackmail took on its modern meaning of general extortion for money in the 19th century.