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Just the FAQs, Ma’am

Our newest book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Fun FAQs, should appear in stores in early May. Inside, you’ll find more than 1,000 entertaining questions and answers about varying subjects from baseball to Beethoven to bananas. This is our fourth book in the past two years and our third offering for Alpha Books, who also published our gift hardcovers The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Not So Useless Knowledge and The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to More Not So Useless Knowledge.

Click here to get 5 percent off Amazon’s already low price if you order it before the release date of May 6. Thanks!

But… This isn’t Even Odd!

I have several “clip services” attached to my browser’s default page so that I can keep tabs (at least a little) on what’s happening in the real world. One of those is called Odd News from AP, and as you might expect, it collects the most unusual stories recently spat out by the Associated Press. Or so I thought.

Today, this story showed up. Here’s a rundown:

1. Neighbors complain because dog nearly bites them.
2. Officers visit dog’s owner, warns him to restrain dog.
3. The owner fails to do so, and the dog bites the officers.
4. The officers arrest the owner and send the dog to the pound.
5. The end.

Not exactly Twilight Zone or even Mad TV material, is it? Now if one of the officers bit the dog, or the dog bit off one of the officer’s fingers and they had to wait a couple days for nature to run its course so that the cop could get his wedding ring back, then I’d say “okay.” But the police doing what they’re supposed to do? That’s odd?

Maybe in Detroit it is…

Hot Box

This item was advertised in a recent flyer we received in the mail from Bed, Bath & Beyond. While I have no grudge against the store or anyone involved… I gotta say, doesn’t this device just reek of danger? I know how hot many of the power chargers for my small electronics can get. Can you imagine what it would be like putting four of them in a power strip inside a small box? It seems like that’s just asking for the chargers to overheat and/or start a fire. Yes, I’m sure there’s some ventilation, but still.

It makes me wonder if Underwriters Laboratories have any say-so when it comes to furniture to house electronics. I know they approve the electronics themselves… Sadly, we’ve got a deadline looming and I don’t have time to look it up right now. But I will!

Mets math

I didn’t take statistics in college, so maybe I’m missing something. But this article makes me think. If you don’t want to bother to click through, the article cites a Web source containing odds for teams to reach the 2008 World Series. What I don’t get is that five out of the top six teams are American League teams. The Mets are the only NL representative among those top six.

Now, only one AL team and one NL team makes it to the World Series. So how can you have five different AL teams at 7:2, 5:1 and 10:1 odds, but only one NL team at better than 12:1 odds? If the Mets were big-time favorites, I guess it would make sense, but they’re 4:1.

I’m usually good at math, so someone please explain this to me.

Throwing stones

Madonna’s just been inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame? Hmmmm. The definition of rock ‘n’ roll must have changed a whole lot since I was younger.

The path of armageddon?

I went to check tomorrow’s weather, and saw this:

Is it the Russians? Are we all dead?

“For some moments in life, there are no words.”

If you’re a fan of the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you might enjoy this page, which delves into the literary sources behind many of Willy’s best quotes in the film.

They Might Be (er, are) Giants

Not all Giants fared as well as New York’s football team did this past Sunday. In fact, Giants have a stigma attached to them nearly as large as their heads, as these seven examples will reveal:

1. That’s One Big Link!

In 1961, Jimmy Dean introduced the world to the giant known as “Big Bad John” via his #1 hit song of the same name. Such was decency in our nation at the time that the radio wouldn’t play the version that ended by calling John “a hell of a man.” Instead, a second rendition referred to him as “a big, big man.” Mind you, this was decades before anyone thought of putting parental advisories on recordings, or releasing “clean” and “dirty” versions of singles. Dean also became a giant in the sausage world by investing nearly all of his music proceeds into a pork business. (Yes, he’s that “Jimmy Dean” too.)

2. Some Giants are Bright

Giant Stars should enjoy being big, ’cause they won’t be around very long. While our Sun, for instance, will stay bright and yellow another 5 billion years or so, it will then expand into a red giant for, oh, 500 million years or so. It will actually grow larger than the Earth’s orbit, meaning we’re not going to be around to enjoy the show. But once it’s done puffing out, it will shrink to a white dwarf - about the size of what would be Earth if it were still there. So if you’re going to clean your basement, now’s the time.

Continue reading They Might Be (er, are) Giants…

Wot’s… uh, the Deal?

This advertisement recently arrived in our snail mail with some advertisements and sale papers on the inside. Please explain to me why anyone would be interested in attaining a set of 45 of the 50 state quarters. I mean, yes, you can get the other five when they come out, but not in uncirculated condition. (By the time you touch them, they’re circulated.) So why get what you know is an incomplete set?

Would you buy a Beatles boxed set that had every album the band recorded except for Let It Be? Yeah, I know, Let It Be isn’t my favorite either, but still…

the Quarter Backs quiz

Thanks to the power of email sharing among trivia buffs, teachers, and coin collectors, our Quarter Backs quiz at mentalfloss.com just keeps right on rolling. Placed on the blog at the beginning of July, the quiz began to attract thousands of players every day without any specific promotion.

By the end of 2007, more than one million unique visitors had taken the Quarter Backs quiz. It’s not quite a platinum record, but we’ll take it!