I have always assumed that it was on purpose - - I read a study about eating habits recently that showed that people eat faster and eat more in a loud, distracting environment. The difference was not tiny either - - made a huge difference in both amount and speed of consumption. The authors theorized that the noise and distraction caused people to pay less attention and have less awareness of internal feedback about how hungry or how full you really are.

What continues to gall me is the relentless beer advertising you see now (but it is OK because we say "please drink responsibly" at the end of the ad!). What really pushed me over the edge was when Anheuser Bush threatened to pull advertising if the NFL did not do something about the rampant domestic abuse in the papers all of the time with NFL players. Just go ask any police officer you know just how many empty Budweiser cans they usually see when they go to a domestic abuse call. The hypocrisy is just stunning.

My favorite Rodney: Yeah, my sex life is terrible. My wife now only lets me make love to her once a month. I guess I shouldn't feel bad though - - I know a couple of guys that she cut off altogether....

I live in central Washington state and there was quite a bit of "end of the world catastrophe" type panic around here with people in bidding wars trying to buy generators. Most of our power comes from hydroelectric dams that were built in the 30's and 40's. The people in charge of the dams had to repeatedly point out that (1) water was not going to stop running downhill, and (2) all of the manual, mechanical, non-computerized controls and switches that the dams were built with still worked just fine.

When I was young, my grandparents (in the Puget Sound area) had several hummingbird feeders hanging on the railing of their deck. My grandfather showed me how, if you remained absolutely still, you could hold your hand under the feeder and the hummingbirds would eventually take advantage of the chance to rest and perch on your finger. It took a while for them to trust you, and if you even blinked your eyes, they would all scatter. I have had people absolutely refuse to believe me when I tell them I have had 5 or 6 hummingbirds perched on my finger before. They are pretty amazing to look at up close like that, and you can actually feel the heat radiating from their little high-energy bodies.

I personally think that the best thing to come from this movie was the Gone With the Wind parody on the Carol Burnett show ("Went With the Wind"). It was one of the funniest comedy sketches in television history. "I saw it in a window and I just had to have it"... Her curtain rod outfit is on display at the Smithsonian. When she came down the stairs in that outfit it was the longest sustained laugh in the 10-year history of the show.

A few months ago I had my daughter over and she wanted to bake something and I told her I had store-bought pie crust, but nothing to put in it and did not feel like a trip to the store. We rooted around in the cupboards and all we could find was a bib box of raisins. She dug through some old cookbooks I have (from the 30's and 40's - they are wonderful!) and found a recipe for raisin pie. Sounded strange but we went ahead and made it and it was absolutely amazing - - one of the best pies I have ever had.

Paul Revere & the Raiders we min and my brother's FAVORITE band when we were kids in the late 60's. We absolutely wore out our 45's of their hit records. Then years later in the late 70's, I was at a car show in Seattle wandering around and heard some familiar music. I walked over and there in the corner of the arena was Paul Revere & the Raiders. They were in full costume, listlessly playing their music while absolutely NOBODY paid attention to them. From the looks on their faces, they clearly did not want to be there, and it was pretty clear that nobody at the car show cared if they were there. Was one of the saddest things I have ever seen... Really brought home to me some truths about the fleeting nature of fame that, as a 17-year old I had never really considered.

Jeff Goldblum was also in Death wish as a thug. He is listed in the credits though.

Can't belive that I got Totall Recall correct. I guess I really am a 14-year-old boy at heart...

"To go where no band has gone before" (too obvious?)

Yay! Always cool to see something on Mental Floss relating to my home town. I grew up on Vashon Island - - my friends and I noticed this pond not long after they put it in. You can see it from the nearby road (the one the car is on toward the bottom of the picture above, as the road kind of goes up a hill) - - it is kind of foreshortened from that angle, but you can still make out what it is. Interesting note for Mental Floss/internet junkies - - this pond is walking distance (probably a couple of miles) from the internet-famous "bicycle tree" where the old baloon-tire bicycle is grown into the crotch of a tree. Go Vashon!

Word police - - "alter" (#8) means "to change" - - I believe the word you are looking for here is "altar"...