Bob and Marcia explore unexpected connections between common objects and literary works, delving into language and cultural differences. They discuss the origins of everyday words and phrases, sharing intriguing facts and trivia. Later, they examine the peculiar items left behind at Disney World, with Bob curious about the reasons and Marcia viewing it as a reflection of humanity’s underside. Through their conversations, they demonstrate how seemingly unrelated items can have fascinating backstories and cultural significance.
Outline
Tires, crayons, and swan songs.
- Bob and Marcia Smith discuss the longest sentence in literature, revealing it to be Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the origins of the phrase “swan song” and its connection to the Crayola crayon company.
Military origins of phrases and words.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the origins of the phrase “he bought the farm” and its connection to the military and aviation.
- They also explore the history of illegal drugs in the US, including hemp, opium, cocaine, and marijuana, which were once legally available from druggists.
- Bob Smith explains the origin of the term “rookie,” which originated in the military and was popularized by Rudyard Kipling in 1892.
- Tanks were originally called “tanks” due to their resemblance to water tanks. The name was intentionally chosen to disguise their secret weapon status during World War I.
Trivia, humor, and shoes.
- Marcia and Bob discuss the negative calorie theory, with Marcia providing information on celery and its calorie content.
- Bob asks Marcia a question about a country whose name was once synonymous with a fabric, and Marcia incorrectly identifies India as the answer.
- Marcia and Bob Smith discuss a humorous essay about dress shoes missing their owner, who is now working from home and neglecting them.
- The shoes long for the days when their owner wore them to parties and events, but now they’re relegated to the closet and only get occasional walks around the living room.
- Bob Smith estimates it would take 68 years to stay overnight in every hotel room in Disney World.
- Marcia Smith shares interesting facts about lost items at Walt Disney World, including a prosthetic leg, glass eye, and 18,000 hats.
Famous dances, language diversity, and digital payments.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss the origins of the polka dot pattern, which originated in Czechoslovakia and became associated with the polka dance craze in the 19th century.
- Marcia Smith shares that the most linguistically diverse country in the world is Papua New Guinea, with over 850 different languages spoken there.
- Bob and Marcia discuss the popularity of the Golden Girls and a recent accident involving PayPal, where a man was credited with 92 quadrillion dollars.
- The pair also explore words that have different meanings in the UK and the US, such as “homely” and “rubber”.
Language differences and viral origins.
- Bob and Marcia discuss word differences between American and British English, including “jumper” vs. “sweater,” “trolley” vs. “shopping cart,” and more.
- Bob Smith and Marcia Smith discuss the origins of language and written languages, with some scientists suggesting that an ancient viral infection may have given humans the ability to read and write.
- They also share some humorous quips related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the idea that hand sanitizers are now more important than mouthwash.
Bob Smith 0:01
What do automobile tires and Crayola crayons have in common?
Marcia Smith 0:05
What famous book has one sentence 3687 words logged here?
Bob Smith 0:11
answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith.
Welcome to the offering a chance to slow down steer clear of crazy. Take a side road to sanity and get some perspective on life. Well, Marsha, I think this is the 19th show we’ve done since the COVID. Emergency began. And we’re still at it. We still are. We’re learning fun things as we go up and go to our public library, go to books go to the web. And let’s answer your first question there. What is that again? About how long is that sentence?
Marcia Smith 1:02
3687 words that 16 pages long if you double spaced.
Bob Smith 1:08
And you did I take it?
Marcia Smith 1:11
It’s 12 point font.
Bob Smith 1:12
Well, something to do. Yeah.
Marcia Smith 1:15
Killing time in COVID world. So the question is what book what book has a sentence that long? Yeah, I’ll give you the year. It came out. Okay. Maybe it’ll help 1922 1920.
So it’s considered old classic.
Bob Smith 1:30
It’s not F Scott Fitzgerald because he was really brief. He had brevity when
Marcia Smith 1:33
he wrote this goes against every fiber of my being okay.
Bob Smith 1:37
That’s not a Hemingway story either. Because he was pretty terse. All right. What was it?
Marcia Smith 1:42
It’s Molly blooms soliloquy in Joyce’s novel Ulysses,
Bob Smith 1:48
James Joyce’s Ulysses, a big thick book.
Marcia Smith 1:52
Oh, it was and that’s because it Pat only 10 sentences.
Bob Smith 1:56
Apparently, what in the world? Yeah,
Marcia Smith 1:59
so she was certainly long winded Molly bloom.
Bob Smith 2:01
Now she’s a character in his novel, right? Yes. And,
Marcia Smith 2:05
you know, this is basically why nobody reads these things. I mean, Who the hell’s gonna do
Bob Smith 2:11
okay, what do automobile tires and Crayola crayons have in common? Well,
Marcia Smith 2:15
I would say some kind of rubber oil base thing or something.
Bob Smith 2:21
It was Binney and Smith ever heard of that name. Now. They’re the people that make Crayola crayons. Really, your car’s tires are not naturally black natural rubber is closer to an off white shade. And that’s what the early tires were. But starting in 1917, the manufacturer started adding carbon black to strengthen the rubber and make it more durable. Tires that weren’t treated with carbon black were good for 5000 miles, but tires with Carbon Black could be driven for 50,000 miles or more. So starting in 1917, manufacturers began adding carbon black to the tires now they had to look for a supplier of that and they found it in Binney and Smith. That’s the company that makes Crayola Crayons they used carbon black, they knew where to get it and they sold it to the automakers. Adding carbon black made the rubber stronger, but it actually changed its color to black Hmm. So your tires colors originally came from the Crayola crayon company?
Marcia Smith 3:19
Who would have guessed Okay, Bob swan song. Can you give me the origins of that phrase, swan song
Bob Smith 3:28
must have been because of the birds singing did they swim? Did they die after they sang?
Marcia Smith 3:33
Well, that is the folklore that the swans sing most beautifully before they die. They know they’re going down. And and then they sing and so that became a phrase used for people’s last hurrah, you know, and the phrase is of ancient origin and you can find it in Plato, Aristotle Euripides, even Shakespeare used it in several plays. And just a little aside on on swans, they’re monogamous. And they have been known to actually pass away from a broken heart if their partner dies, and they don’t find another partner.
Bob Smith 4:09
Wow. So they and human beings both do that and other animals to
Marcia Smith 4:13
some dogs once in a while.
Bob Smith 4:17
Okay, now this is an expression like, kind of like swan song. He bought the farm. What does that usually mean? They you die? Yeah. But why? Yeah. Where did the
Marcia Smith 4:28
he bought the farm? Because people who bought a farm became farmers. They died quick, because there’s so much work involved
Bob Smith 4:36
could be legitimately true. It’s a very, very hard life. But it actually comes from the military. Oh, it came from aviation in either World War Two or the early US Air Force in the 1950s. One theory is that when a pilot died in the Army Air Force, the death benefits his family would get from the US government would be enough to pay the mortgage for the family farm. So death for your country meant you were buying the family farmed for your parents? Yeah. And then a second meaning comes from early aviation training, which was almost always conducted over rural sparsely populated areas to be safe. And so planes often crashed into barns and other farm buildings and those accidents were compensated for by the Government with monies that often paid for the farm. Either way, it was definitely popularized by US pilots from World War Two or the early air force in the 1950s. So it’s an American expression, he bought the farm. So it’s easier than saying he died. Although it’s more words, that’s more work to say it
Marcia Smith 5:36
sounds a little more flippy and more fun, right? Okay. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington grew many crops on their plantations. Can you name three of them that are mostly considered illegal today?
Bob Smith 5:51
Well, I know hemp. Yep. Hemp was that’s cannabis. So that was used for roots change. Washington had a huge rope making facility. Okay, that was a big long thing. Okay. Now what were the others two others
Marcia Smith 6:03
that are? I
Bob Smith 6:05
have no idea.
Marcia Smith 6:05
opium and cocaine. Really? Yeah. And his latest the 1860s. All three of these could be purchased legally from any druggist.
Bob Smith 6:14
But both Jefferson and Washington room and cocaine and marijuana.
Marcia Smith 6:18
So I don’t know about the ropes. But I do know that people bought weed from the druggist back in the day.
Bob Smith 6:27
Okay, here’s another word origin quote. Why is a newcomer called a rookie?
Marcia Smith 6:34
Rookie, a newcomer to baseball or sports or comer
Bob Smith 6:38
to anything? Yeah, it actually it’s rookie. Is anyone new to an organization requiring teamwork? Does
Marcia Smith 6:45
it have anything to do with chess, and the rooks are on the end and not the smallest piece. So I don’t know. Part of
Bob Smith 6:52
it may come from a game but lack of experience can cause errors, right? So one explanation is traced back to the Civil War, when massive numbers of raw recruits were rushed into battle the veterans called the incompetent raw recruits wreck ease, like reckless almost. The word may also be influenced by the word rook in its secondary sense of card cheater. So the word basically soldiers with inadequate world experience, were easy to rook to cheat. So they’re rookies anyway became synonymous. And that was popularized by Rudyard Kipling in 1892, the barrack room ballads. He talks about rookies. So it comes from the military, a rookie.
Marcia Smith 7:35
It was Thomas Edison, Bob, who suggested that people answer the telephone with the word hello. People seem to like this better than the word they had been using and was recommended by the telephone company. Do you know what word that was? Yes,
Bob Smith 7:50
it was a hoist. How do you know that’s an old trivia fact. And apparently Alexander Graham Bell suggested using a high Scottish I guess I don’t know. Can you imagine people answer but you know, hello. That was not a that was not a term people used a lot back then. So but uh, holy I can’t imagine that. Pick up the phone. Oh, a Marcia. Shadow me timbers matey. Yeah. Oh, hi. Sorry. I get all right, Bob.
Marcia Smith 8:22
You got something for me. Okay.
Bob Smith 8:23
I got another military question. Okay. What famous military weapons name was originally a ruse. Its shipping crates were intentionally Miss named to disguise its secret weapon status. This is a famous military weapon still in use today. But its name originally was a roof and we still call it the same thing. Tanks. That’s exactly right. Tanks are places to store water, right. But it’s also a heavily armored combat vehicle. It was designed in secret by who?
Marcia Smith 8:58
Got me there, Bob British Army. Okay. 1915.
Bob Smith 9:00
And that was intentionally designed to try to get around trench warfare to go over the trenches. So I knew that I saw that on a documentary. So many people were dying because of trench warfare. So they develop this. In 1915, the land ships committee commissioned a small land ship to get around trench warfare. They actually codenamed a tank. When anybody asked what’s going on. We’re building tanks, like you’re building water tanks. They intentionally named it that and they shipped it to the front in crates labeled tanks. So when they came out, everybody started calling them tanks. They didn’t have some big fancy combat name. Yeah, I
Marcia Smith 9:36
also thought it was a acronym and it is
Bob Smith 9:39
not an acronym. Technical armored. Yeah, and Nana Nana, vehicle. Ba K for what? No, it’s not an acronym.
Marcia Smith 9:49
Okay, let’s go. Let’s go from military tanks to vegetables. What vegetable is considered to have negative cow Always,
Bob Smith 10:00
what vegetable has negative calories?
Marcia Smith 10:02
How can that be? You say?
Bob Smith 10:04
Yes. How can that be? I say,
Marcia Smith 10:05
I’ll tell you once you Okay, identify the vegetable.
Bob Smith 10:09
I have no idea what would have negative calories? I don’t know. Celery.
Marcia Smith 10:14
Really? Yes. And it’s the reason why it’s on so many diets because it provides the hand to mouth fixation. And basically, it takes more calories to eat than it contains to begin with.
Bob Smith 10:27
This is why you don’t like celery. I like celery. Marcia hates celery. Oh, it’s the texture is just so it’s like, it’s a zero sum game. Yeah,
Marcia Smith 10:36
it was great. Yeah, less than zero because it takes more energy to in so you’re burning calories. eating anything.
Bob Smith 10:42
That’s not a bad thing. And it’s also such a what I like about celery It’s so refreshing. And that crunchy sound is refreshing.
Marcia Smith 10:51
That’s why people like it. You don’t like it? Only if I have a pound peanut butter on Oh, cheese.
Bob Smith 10:58
You and peanut butter. Well, I like peanut butter too. Okay, I have a question. What country’s name was once synonymous with a fabric? This is an old country.
Marcia Smith 11:09
Oh, I’m thinking of my not my dress. With a fabric. I’m thinking of Scottish. Is it in Scotland? No,
Bob Smith 11:20
you were you were closer first when you’re talking about modulus Oh, okay
Marcia Smith 11:23
then I don’t know. That’s the Oh, that’s my answer. Well, that came from India. Madras. Yeah, and that’s where I thought maybe this Scottish. What is that plaid called? I’m sorry. No, what’s the answer? Nice face the tart. And that’s it. I was thinking of tartan.
Bob Smith 11:40
Yeah, well, what country is tartan Marcia? This goes back to what?
Marcia Smith 11:44
I am on my bucket list.
Bob Smith 11:47
Oh, you want to go to the tartan right after I learned we’ll be traveling to tartan and then we’ll be going to the Caucasians after that. Got to know Marcia? No, no. Okay. The country was India. Okay. And according to the Wall Street Journal in ancient cultures, the word India was shorthand for cotton. Because the Indians have been exporting textiles for 6000 years since 4000. BC. And EC really? Yeah, since 4000 BC, India has been exporting cotton. Well, that’s Did you know that I have no idea. So one time if you said to India, you met cotton people say oh, yeah, I where? India? Really? Yeah.
Marcia Smith 12:27
Okay, Bob, electric eels. Okay, in the rivers of South America are some of the most powerful in the world. And on average, they can deliver How many volts of electricity?
Bob Smith 12:39
Ooh, that’s interesting. Because you can be killed by when I assume right? It can
Marcia Smith 12:43
mess up. You mess up your heartbeat and stuff. I would think
Bob Smith 12:46
so. Well, 100 volts, I’ll just throw that number. Yeah, that’s
Marcia Smith 12:50
a good guess. Okay. It’s 600 though. Wow, that’s equivalent to 400 double A batteries. I was trying to get some kind of content.
Bob Smith 13:00
That’s a lot to carry around 400 double EIGHT. He’ll
Marcia Smith 13:03
in your backpack and you can charge your phones and all sorts of.
Bob Smith 13:10
Wow. All right. And let’s take a break. We’ll be back. You’re listening to trivia on the off ramp with Bob
Marcia Smith 13:15
and Marsha Smith.
Bob Smith 13:19
Okay, we’re back Bob and Marcia Smith and the off ramp. Today we’re doing trivia as we have been doing for the past 1819 weeks here during our COVID emergency. And I don’t know if you remember Marcia, but earlier on the show, I read portions of a essay that Jason gay who is the sports writer for The Wall Street Journal, but he’s also a great humorist. He reminds me of Art Buchwald or somebody like that from years ago. He did a piece we used it was about the dog how your dog’s not happy with you being home now. It was fun at first, but I’m tired of it. Yeah, here’s the latest one, which was in the August 1 edition of The Wall Street Journal is high. It’s us your dress shoes. We miss you. So I just wanted to give you a little bit of that. Okay, okay. Hey, there. It’s us your dress shoes. Remember us? We live inside the closet bottom left? No, no, not those the other shoes. The good ones? The leather ones. You’re really good shoes. You want us to that big party in March the bash with a fancy hors d’oeuvres. What a night. That was you had all your best clothes on. We’re not ashamed to say it. We look great that night. But those days feel gone. And yes, we heard about the pandemic. Yes, we know what’s going on. We get cable television in here. Plus some podcasts. We know that life has changed. You can’t go to the movies. You have to wear a mask. And then it goes on. It’s got some real funny stuff there. And then it ends with this. Don’t get us started on face masks. We get it they’re important but those masks won’t shut up about how special they are. The face masks need face masks. Okay, well stop complaining. Well, you know you have a lot going on if you want to take us out just for a walk around the living room too. Give us a little bit of exercise. That’d be great. Maybe you could even put on a nice outfit. You know, like old times. Life is too precious for flip flops. Love your dress shoes, because I think we all have at least one pair maybe more that we haven’t put on got
Marcia Smith 15:14
those wingtips waiting in line to come out and see you. Okay, what do you got? Okay, Bob, how long would it take you to sleep one night in every hotel room located in Disney World?
Bob Smith 15:27
Oh, my goodness. And if you’ve never been there, you don’t realize there’s so many little housing areas with different themes and everything. What did we say? It was a Caribbean beach Caribbean Beach, something that was years ago. Okay, so I’m just wasting time here because I don’t know the answer. I’ll say. There’s so many hotel rooms. I think I heard this for Las Vegas. There’s something like 42 years to stay in every hotel room. Well,
Marcia Smith 15:51
that’s a whole city. Oh, yeah.
Bob Smith 15:53
Well, okay, what’s the answer? Well, what’s
Marcia Smith 15:56
your answer? 22 years? Okay. No. 68 year.
Bob Smith 16:00
Oh, you led me in the wrong direction.
Marcia Smith 16:03
Me You bought that. You didn’t buy the
Bob Smith 16:05
eight. Yeah, I didn’t buy the car. Yes. 68 years just to stay overnight in every hotel room in Disney World. Yes,
Marcia Smith 16:13
Palm Beach post carries all sorts of interesting factoids about Walt Disney World. One of them is that you’re never more than 30 steps away from a trash receptacle. Well, there you go. And every year they’re lost and found department takes in roughly 6000 Cell phones, six 6000 Cell phones, 3500 digital cameras and 18,000 hats. And what some of the weirdest things turned in a glass eye, a prize last eye prosthetic leg and a potty trainer. Wait
Bob Smith 16:45
a minute, how could you leave your prosthetic leg? Wait a minute, something’s happening
Marcia Smith 16:51
so much. Something’s not right. Now all of those particular items were claimed by the same person hopefully
Bob Smith 16:58
not. Also glass i My goodness, once you know right away, I don’t have my class I would do it. I remember years ago when I was a kid, I lived in Michigan and the Soo Locks they would find all kinds of stuff like that. And we were up there one time. And one of the guides were saying oh, these are the Hmong the things we find every year and they were false teeth, you know, people be looking over in their false teeth with fall in the water. So when you have a sanitation job, you really discover things about the underside of humanity. Wow. That’s all I could say about that. All right. What famous dance inspired a design pattern that lives to this day. What famous dance inspired a design pattern and you you use the name all the tax plan? Scotch plaid, of course, it’s the Scotch plaid dance. No. Use Here’s a hint. It carries the dances name.
Marcia Smith 17:52
Polka Dot.
Bob Smith 17:53
That’s exactly right. Really? Yeah. It’s a leftover. I didn’t know this. But you know the polka dance craze that was in the 19th century. came to America in 1835. What do you think the dance come from?
Marcia Smith 18:04
I would think Germany, Germany or Poland? Yeah, no,
Bob Smith 18:09
Czechoslovakia. Okay, now the term polka is a Polish word for Polish woman. Yeah, but the dance came from Czechoslovakia. And there were a lot of spin off products. There were things named at Polka, this Polka, that Polka. And the polka dot pattern was one of the patterns of dresses that became associated with the dance. They were never really possible until the industrial revolution that repetition Well, the the symmetry and the perfect space patterns. And then of course, they came into the 20th century in 1926. Miss America Norma Smallwood wore a polka dot dress. And then Minnie Mouse became many that one right what two popular songs carry the words polka.in The
Marcia Smith 18:52
entirety Bitsy polka dot bikini? Yeah. That
Bob Smith 18:55
was 1960 Brian Hyland. Another polka dot song was sung by one of your favorite singers.
Marcia Smith 19:02
Don’t know Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra, Sang Sang.
Bob Smith 19:10
Polka Dots and rainbows. Okay,
Marcia Smith 19:12
dear. What is the most linguistically diverse country in the world?
Bob Smith 19:18
Well, I would think the United States because we have all these immigrants here, but am I wrong? Oh, very. China has a lot of different dialects wrong. Okay.
Marcia Smith 19:29
Okay. It’s Papa New Guinea. Oh, New Guinea, Pau PA and you want to take a guess? How many this country of 7.6 million people this must
Bob Smith 19:40
be from all the tribes of the indigenous people from going back centuries? I don’t know how many I know. Let’s say 200. Daily.
Marcia Smith 19:47
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good guess. They’d speak 850 different languages. Oh my God. Isn’t that crazy? In that little country and the two most popular Language spoke there are English and Creole. Really? Yeah. Creole Now that’s interesting. Yeah. When to guess that either? All
Bob Smith 20:08
right, Marsha, as you are looking at the web these days you find so many interesting things that are coming back in vogue. You know, lava lamps came back a couple of years ago. Did you ever hear about the Golden Girls Mount Rushmore chia pet? As a friend, why is the golden girls coming back into such popularity? Who’s
Marcia Smith 20:28
buying it?
Bob Smith 20:29
I don’t know. But the Golden Girls that was 35 years ago they premiered wasn’t really but the chia pet folks have reimagined Mount Rushmore with four very different heads. It’s a new Chia Pet instead of the four presidents you got Bea Arthur Estelle Getty Betty White and Rue McClanahan, the Rushmore Chia Pet decorative planner, Golden Girls got the green things growing out of their heads. Very funny. Got a funny picture. Yeah, I thought that was very strange.
Marcia Smith 20:54
All right, Bob. In 2013 PayPal accidentally created the world’s first what
Bob Smith 21:02
PayPal accidentally created the world’s first can you give me any hint? Ah,
Marcia Smith 21:07
it’s something to do with the monetary world.
Bob Smith 21:11
Oh, is it the first digital payment or first digital me
Marcia Smith 21:14
put it this way? It gave this fellow certain cachet in the world of money. How much did they accidentally give him? He became the world’s first
Bob Smith 21:24
millionaire. I don’t know Mr. quadrillion,
Marcia Smith 21:27
err. Pay Pal accidentally credited a 56 year old Pennsylvania guy with 92 quadrillion dollars.
Unknown Speaker 21:38
Oh dear.
Marcia Smith 21:39
That’s 92 followed by 15 zeros. That’s a lot of Philly cheesecakes. That amount but is basically 1000 times greater than the world’s entire GDP.
Bob Smith 21:52
Did you get to keep it? That’s my question. What
Marcia Smith 21:55
do you think? Nope. Can you imagine you go to your PayPal account? Mine always says zero. You go in there and it says in your account is 92 quadrillion quadrillion
Bob Smith 22:07
dollars. That’s a lot. That’s it. That’s a bit. Okay, March. I have a fun thing here. I found on the web. It’s words that mean different things in the UK, which is England and the USA. Okay. Okay. If I said to you, Marsha, you’re homely? What would you say? You’d be upset, wouldn’t you? Maybe.
Marcia Smith 22:27
But it actually means in homely over there means attractive. It
Bob Smith 22:30
means pleasant, evocative of home warmth. You know, she’s a homely girl. Your boyfriend would not kill somebody if you said that. Right? Right. Okay, here’s a word tell me what it means in the UK and what it means here.
Marcia Smith 22:43
Okay, this is a big rubber. It can be a tire here.
Bob Smith 22:47
Well, it could also be a condom here. Yeah, but over there.
Marcia Smith 22:49
It’s what it is. Cash.
Bob Smith 22:53
I used a rubber in school. Eraser. Yes, an eraser. Exactly. Isn’t that funny? All right. And then here’s another one. All right. Pants. It’s fine for a man to wander outside at America wearing nothing but his pants. Yeah, but in Britain not so much. In Britain trousers go over pants pants or underpants. Oh, really? Yeah, that’s yeah. And then one more then I’ve got a few more we can do later some other time. Jumper jumper Okay, jumper if you’re an American who read the British version of the Harry Potter series, the British version. You would wonder why all the boys so often wore jumpers? Yeah,
Marcia Smith 23:29
aren’t they those little overalls? Little rompers
Bob Smith 23:32
in the UK? A jumper is a sweater?
Marcia Smith 23:34
Oh, really? Yeah. I wouldn’t have guessed that either.
Bob Smith 23:38
I thought that was funny. Ah, okay.
Marcia Smith 23:41
We talked about Fahrenheit and Celsius last week? Yes. Yeah. Those two temperature scales actually intersect are the same at what temperature? They intersect at what temperature? They actually read the same because the
Bob Smith 23:57
Celsius is zero to 100 zero meaning when water freezes 100 When water boils, and then Fahrenheit is all over the map. I don’t know what’s the temperature
Marcia Smith 24:06
minus 40 degrees is the same on Celsius and Fahrenheit.
Bob Smith 24:11
It’s damn cold. Those standards? That’s correct. Okay, in the UK trolley trolley. What’s a trolley
Marcia Smith 24:19
trolley is something that works with with those electric bikes electric
Bob Smith 24:25
train, right. It’s an electric vehicle that runs metal tracks and it’s it’s run by electricity right to the wire. All right, in the UK. What are trolleys? I don’t know a cigarette. No, a trolley is the equivalent
Marcia Smith 24:37
of a shopping cart. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Yeah.
Bob Smith 24:41
Now some more confusion Canadians throw yet another word into the mix buggy for shopping cart. Oh, really? They use buggies when they shop. We use shopping carts and Brits use trolley. I don’t know. It’s just interesting how words are used differently. Well, and we’re all English. We’re all speaking the same language but using different words for the same Same thing. Very good. All right now, this is interesting. There is a new book out called some assembly required. And it’s by Neil Shubin. And it reports that scientists now believe that our ability to reason store information Read Write, and remember might be due to an ancient virus. So viruses aren’t always bad. So a virus may have given us a specific gene, you know, a virus can cause anomalies in evolution. And they think, with the only reason that we can do this things we do as human beings, is because we came up on shore and got a land base virus a gene, because fish don’t have it. There’s all kinds of other things that don’t have it. They live in the sea. All landbased animals have this gene. It’s called the aarC activity regulated cytoskeleton associated protein.
Marcia Smith 25:50
I thought that yes,
Bob Smith 25:52
it does roll off the tongue. Yeah, anyway. So that’s, that’s what the thought is that an ancient viral infection may be the reason you can read right? And remember,
Marcia Smith 26:01
come out of this. Don’t know. All right. Here’s
Bob Smith 26:05
another one. And this really would explain this weird coincidence. If you look into history, written languages appeared almost simultaneously all over the world starting 3500 BCE. Before that, you can’t find much written words anywhere, have virus may have given us the ability to have a language written languages. So some scientists think that viruses may have caused that. All right, and viruses can be geographically isolated like to islands. That may be why Australia has unique pouch animals. They have the kangaroo, the Wallaby, the koala. Most of those aren’t found very many other places. And they found fossils that there were marsupial lions, wolves and saber toothed Tigers all with pouches that once roamed Australia, but nowhere else because they think there was a virus there and it was isolated to the island. So viruses, a lot of history of viruses. And you’ve got some stuff there. At the end. I
Marcia Smith 27:01
got some Corona quips I call them that made me laugh. Okay, okay. Did you ever notice that every disaster movie starts with a government ignoring a scientist? Yes, true. That is true. We’re not going to listen to that. It’s always every every big. Okay? anybody else’s car getting three weeks to the gallon, three weeks. And never in my life. Would I imagine that my hands would consume more alcohol than my mouth.
Bob Smith 27:32
Yeah, so hand sanitizers. Yes, absolutely.
Marcia Smith 27:34
Anyway, those are quips from the COVID corner.
Bob Smith 27:37
All right, and we’re in the COVID corner here doing trivia every week. We really want to thank everybody we know is listening. We get people telling us from all over the country. They’re starting to listen to our show, and I’m really happy for that. So we hope you’ll join us again next time here. I’m Bob Smith. I’m Marcia Smith. And this has been the off ramp
the off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
