Franklin Henry Adams: that's very arguable.

There have been 44 Presidents of the United States (43 if you count Cleveland only once). The constitution speaks of the "President of the United States" several times--it's the official title.

There were 16 Presidents of the Continental Congress, with the official title "President of the Congress". It was an office with essentially no power except as a presiding officer.

The NY Post had an article about mandatory gratuities in NYC. In NY, automatic gratuities are only legal for parties of 8 or more, and is not allowed to be higher than 15%. The Department of Consumer Affairs has fined many restaurants for not following those guidelines.

Coinstars reject wheat pennies? Wheat pennies are the same weight, dimensions and metallic composition as Lincoln memorial pennies that date from 1959 to 1982 (post '82s are majority zinc). While I've never used a coinstar branded machine, the ones in my bank have no trouble accepting copper pennies, a large number of which remain in circulation.

By the way, the best way to find silver coins is to request half-dollars from your bank. In the early 90s, before I had direct deposit, I used to do this everytime I'd drop by to deposit my paycheck. It was pretty common to get one or two 40% silver halves every time I'd request $20 in halves. Also, halves are fun to spend. Unfortunately, they're no longer minting them for circulation (as of 2002), and many banks no longer carry them.

Web 2.0 new? This reminds me of a client RFC to our department, asking how we planned to grow and adapt to new technologies, including patching and migrating to "web 3.0". We were nearly rolling in the floor over that.

"filet americain"! I know someone else who fell for that deceptive menu item, while in Belgium!

It is sad we'll never know what all those lost species tasted like. I'm sure many were yummy.

There are few things more terrifying than to put Mr Potato Head parts on a real potato, then leave it in a dark place for a few weeks. The results could have come right out of a Lovecraft story.

When I was at U Texas in the late 80s, Douglass Parker (the famed Aristophanes scholar and translator) taught a class called "Parageography", the study of imaginary geography. The final assignment of the class was to make up your own fictional world (this could very broadly defined--you could go at it with elaborate maps, or do an in-depth "study" the music or linguistics or economy or whatever).

Awww, such a cute little mass-murderer.

Apparently he's actually been down there in the tunnels already for several weeks, playing some fantasy RPG. He only answers to the name "Pardu".

The Ben Franklin quote is spurious. It's similar (though not exactly so) to a statement he made on wine, a beverage he praised many times. His writings rarely mention beer.

In high school, our 10th grade English teacher (this was early 80s) took a marks-a-lot and went through our text book, marking out every gloss of every indecent pun in Romeo & Juliet. This just made everyone curious to seek out the unexpurgated version...

Wow, that's a great site. I found a manuscript illustration (http://tinyurl.com/bb3ldp) of a fairly rare instrument that I am just learning to play: http://flickr.com/photos/allengarvin/3238955191/

I love the Girl Playing a Guitar. I'd love to see something done with other instruments.

I just successfully made one, though I had to use copious amounts of tape. There was no glue to be had.