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Trivia Thread!
More On Termites:
- Queen Termites are the longest lived insect in the insect world. (One source says 20-25 years, another 30-50 years possible.)
- The total weight of all termites in the world exceeds the total weight of all humans in the world. (As of 2021, 445 million tons for termites, 350 million tons for humans.)
- Termites are an excellent source of protien and a number of other essential human needs.
- Termites develop into one of 3 classes: Workers (85-98% of a colony), Soldiers, and Reproductives. When the Queen sees need in the hive to change the balance, she secretes pheremones (through her feces) the younger termites eat. They can actually enter the nymph/larval stage again, change their development, and become one of the other needed classes.
- Termites never sleep, eating and building the nests non-stop 24 hours a day.
- When the colony exceeds its space, the Queen prepares more reproductives (through pheremones). They grow wings, and swarm. Ultimately in the swarm, one male and female emerge as the new "king and queen" of the new hive. When the hive is begun, the reproductives lose their wings again, being unnecessary.
- Though mature termites serve very specific purposes, they can change their role to meet the immediate need of the colony, some of the workers actually shifting back into the nymph stage to develop into the new role.

(For the regular worker and soldier class, all this growth, development, shifting back and forth as needed, etc. occurs within their brief 1-4 year lifespan - 8 months of which is spent in the initial larval/nymph stage becoming something, to begin with. Busy, busy, busy.)
 
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The company Mars Inc., probably best known for their eponymous candy bar, is also one of the largest pet food manufacturers worldwide. According to the Wikipedia article, in 1994 it was the largest such company in the world.
About nine or ten years earlier, the younger brother of a buddy of mine within the company visited him in the Frankfurt region where my buddy and I were with "our" company at the time. Younger brother was with Mars in Germany at the time, or at least had summer-jobbed with them. He told us the bit about the pet food, and the fact that pet cats seem to be finicky eaters. Only the top quality meat was used, lower qualities (like sausage) perfectly safe and legal for human consumption were haughtily disdained by the puddy-tats.
My wife and I had a sort of confirmation of this in a vacation to Spain roughly 30 years ago. Stopping for lunch in a restaurant right by the fishing harbor, we (or at least I) had a hamburger. Not the McD or BK variety drenched in sauce, just meat, bun, and some salad and tomato. There were a lot of feral cats around (they all looked well-fed, though none remotely in the "Garfield" class). I broke off a small chunk from my burger meat and offered it to one cat that was close by. I sniffed at the meat that tasted perfectly to me, but declined. 😬
And the one of the cats friends of ours had years ago was so snooty that it only deigned accept the turkey variety of one specific brand (which probably belonged to Mars).
 
The Exorcist (1973): When the priest is giving last rites to Karras, his authentic grief-stricken shaking is the result of the director slapping him without warning immediately before the shot. Also, one of the technicians in the hospital scenes was later convicted of murder and was possibly a serial killer.
 
I can verify that coffee absolutely keeps me from killing my co-workers...
 
Somehow, some way, "Camptown Races" made its way to Korea, and got turned into a sports cheer.
Just one of many mysteries in this world of ours . . .
 
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Lula Parker Betenson, sister of the real Butch Cassidy, often visited the set, and her presence was welcome to the cast and crew. During lulls in shooting, she would tell stories about her famous brother's escapades, and was amazed at how accurately the script and Paul Newman portrayed him. Before the film was released, the studio found out about her visits and tried to convince her to endorse the movie in a series of ads to be shown in theaters across the country. She said that she would, but only if she saw the film first, and truly stood behind it. The studio refused, saying that allowing her to see the film before its release could harm its reputation. Finally, at Robert Redford's suggestion, she agreed to do the endorsements, for a small fee.
 
Here we are at the 50th anniversary of the first commercial use of the bar code -- on a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum. Now we can't do without it.

In more ways than one. Barliman told me of a yard sale he went to; while looking through some books, the owner came up and said "I hope you don't think they're too old". When he asked what she meant, she explained that a woman who'd stopped by earlier had complained that the books were "too old" -- meaning, no bar codes for her to scan, to see if they were worth shipping off to Amazon.
 
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