Correlation does not imply causation, but correlation *is* valuable. Finding out that something correlates is often the first step toward understanding the issue/problem.

And no, we didn't sponsor the study ;)

Come again, Neil?

@Foreigner1 and Gauldar - Sorry for that! No conspiracy or censorship here, though. You've simply tripped our secondary spam filter. Editors look at the caught comments regularly, but sometimes it takes a while (if we're busy or have gone to bed for the night).

As in the realm of email, spam is a pernicious, whack-a-mole problem on the blogosphere. We get about two thousand spammy comments a day here on Neatorama. It's likely that we flush out legitimate comments at the first automatic spam filter (Akismet) but there's not much I can do about that ... The secondary spam filter is hand-checked.

The photographer Bobby Neel Adams did a similar thing a while ago, with photos of the same person from different ages (i.e. young and old). Featured on Neatorama: Age Maps

Neat post (love the bolded format, Stacy) - one thing I always remember about the Wizard of Oz is that L. Frank Baum's original work is often interpreted as an allegory of the political and economic aspects of life in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

Imageries to support this interpretation is abound in the book: the silver slipper is supposed to symbolize the silver monetary standard. Even the name "OZ" is the abbreviation for "ounce." (Baum denied that his book is anything more than a fairy tale, however).

Interesting reads on the Oz populism theory can be found here and here.

I learn something new every day ... You know, my mother tongue, Bahasa Indonesia, has a very simple rule for plurals: just repeat the word (so airplanes = airplane airplane)

Irregular plurals always trip me up. Thanks for letting me know, Johnny Cat!

Ah hahahaha! This thread is golden!

Quicksilver (liquid mercury) doesn't get absorbed readily through the skin. I think the poison is in the form of mercury vapor.

Boston Latin? Caveat vampiro ...

Love it or hate it, I want to point out that all your comments are welcome and published on Neatorama without any censorship.

I do listen to feedback to improve the next Mystery Sale - this was the third ever such sale, and there has been hiccups and a steep learning curve along the way.

To everyone who participated, I'd like to give you my thanks - you've helped support the blog (and I hope have a little fun along the way).

There's a thread on the Mystery Sale on the Forum (which I check quite regularly) that may explain some of the reasonings behind the sale and shipping process.

Hamburg - I should've caught that. Sorry!

FTFY! Neat find, Christophe!

Jeff Cohen was president of my freshman class in Berkeley. He turned out okay :)

Hm .... Miss C is tempting me with all those food I had as a child growing up in Indonesia :)

Hahahaha! Good one, thesledgehammer!