Things Learned the Hard Way

If you get into your car and something smells like a really rotten banana, there's usually only ONE explanation . . .

Who-Who-Who-Cooks-For-You

Last weekend, my youngest daughter (also known as the Super Flying Coconut) and I heard a talk about owls by a member of the Audubon Society. In particular, we learned about the Great Horned Owl, the Barred Owl, and the Eastern Screech Owl. The little fella in the photo is an Eastern Screech Owl.

Of course, this means that I learned a few new randoms about owls.

1. The Barred Owl has a call that sounds like "Who-Who-Who-Cooks-For-You. Who-Who-Who-Cooks-For-Y'all."

2. Owls have four toes. They use them to grasp branches, generally by placing two toes forward and two toes backward, but they can rotate one toe to the front to use to snatch up prey.

3. Owls' ears are not level. One ear is higher than the other. This allows them to judge the distance of moving objects.

4. Snowy owls are diurnal and migrate to avoid the long, dark winters up north. They can be found near southern airports during the winter. Some think this reminds them of the flat, barren land of their homes.

5. The Great Horned Owl is known as the "Tiger of the Sky" because it has no natural predators once it's in flight.

Nothing Trivial about Texas

The Texas Rangers are playing the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Yes, I know. Nothing new about that. But I thought some of the trivia about Texas shared on last night's game was interesting.

For example, Texas has more airports than any other state. (I didn't know that, but it makes sense. We need them to get from one part of the state to another in less than a day.)

In honor of the Texas Rangers, here are a few other randoms about Texas:

1. Texas spans 801 miles from its southern tip to its northern state line.

2. The Amarillo airport has the 3rd longest runway in the world and is designated as an alternate landing site for the space shuttle.

3. While Texas was a Republic, its northern panhandle extended all the way into southern Wyoming.

4. The Texas state capitol building is the largest of all the states. It spans 8.5 acres and has almost 500 rooms.

5. The largest county in Texas is Brewster County, which covers 6,233 square miles. That's more square miles than Connecticut.

So, when we say things are bigger in Texas, we really mean it.

MOONQUAKE!

So, last week, I mentioned the number of earthquakes in the world each year. Did you know that the moon has quakes too? Not surprisingly, they are called "moonquakes."

Buzz Aldrin planted a seismometer in the Sea of Tranquility while he was there. (Hmmm, that explains one of the little black boxes. My roommate from college always wondered about those, but I digress.)

According to NASA, there are at least four different kinds of moonquakes: (1) deep moonquakes, which are about 700 km below the surface, apparently caused by tides; (2) those that register vibrations from the impact of meteorites; (3) thermal quakes, believed to be caused by the expansion of the frigid crust when the morning sun first hits a spot after two weeks of deep-freeze lunar night; and (4) shallow moonquakes occurring only 20 or 30 kilometers below the surface.

Their equipment has even registered a 5.5 magnitude quake, which is strong enough to move heavy furniture and crack plaster on earth, according to NASA. Some scientists would like to deploy a series of seismometers around the moon to conduct a better study of moonquakes. That would give NASA a better idea of which parts of the moon are more stable so that they'd know where the best possible lunar base locations could be.

Too bad scientists didn't have a chance to do that before all those people moved to California.

What's Shaking?

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there have been 3,678 earthquakes in the United States during 2011 as of October 10th. The USGS estimates that there are several million earthquakes worldwide each year, but many go undetected because of their remote locations or lack of magnitude.

The USGS also detects about 50 mine blasts each business day and maintains a separate explosion list -- just to keep the two straight.

No earthquake of a magnitude 3.5 or greater has occurred in my beloved State of Texas in the past thirty years. Now, if you want to talk about hurricanes, we've got you covered.

To check out real time earthquake activity, hop over to the USGS website: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/

You want me to ride what?

Okay, I think it's a bit crazy to ride a bobsled down a bobsled track. It's definitely crazy to ride a luge or a skeleton sled down a bobsled track. But a wok?

Apparently so.

After a bet on a German TV show, some folks set up the World Wok Racing Championship, which involves one person or four person teams sliding down an Olympic bobsled track on modified Chinese woks. The competitors wear heavy gear similar to hockey uniforms and ladles (yes, cooking ladles) on their feet.

And, if that doesn't sound crazy enough, a single rider has gotten up to 91.70 kmh (or 56.98 mph). A four-person team managed to get to a speed of 114.3 kmh (or 71.02 mph).

If either of my kids ask to borrow the wok any time soon, the answer is definitely "no."

Fried What?

Here in Texas, we like to do everything "bigger and better." Apparently, we like to do things more . . . "creatively" too.

At the recent Texas State Fair, the race was on to see who could come up with the most creative food at the fair. This year's winner -- fried bubble gum. Only, it wasn't really fried bubble gum. It was "fried puffy marshmallows infused with pink bubble gum extract," but that just doesn't sound as catchy as "fried bubble gum."

My only question is: Can you get that on a stick? If not, then it just shouldn't be fair food.