What a stupid law. It's not as if he's making the students salute those flags. I hope that something changes for the better in the state of Colorado because of this.

Okay, people, Law 101 here. The purpose of laws is to ensure a reasonably happy, well-organized society. When laws are made without public consensus, and benefit or please only the person who made them, that is despotism and therefore in violation of the US Constitution. All laws should be based on common sense. If a seemingly arbitrary law must be made, let it be only to prevent accidents that might occur if no rule existed at all (such as, which side of the road to drive on). Nobody's rights are trampled by making them drive on one side and not the other.

Displaying the flags of other countries in a classroom is not a violation of constitutional law. They are decorations, they are of educational value, they are appropriate to the subject being taught. Therefore, whoever proposed that silly law against foreign flags overstepped his or her bounds, and whoever went along with it without questioning its validity was negligent. It should never have become a state law, any more than the anti-Gypsy codes ond sundown towns should have.

Societies run best with minimal laws based on necessity. When little laws governing every aspect of behavior are implemented, it becomes all too easy for good people to get into serious trouble over nothing, and you wind up with horrible dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, Pol Pot's Campuchea, Idi Amin's Uganda, what Somalia's turned into... the list goes on. Allow one person's xenophobia of foreign flags to become law, and you may as well let a misogynist run the place and force women to completely cover themselves and not walk in front of men, men to cut their hair a certain way, and anyone who wears glasses and wristwatches to be shot. Because that's where things go when society is micromanaged like that.

I'll get off my soapbox now...

May God have mercy on us all... I feel like my brain just got shaken down for its lunch money.

Look closely at the blonde in the shot immediately following "Does anyone fancy a shake?" I am without doubt that she just urinates uncontrollably on the stage. No, I don't think I fancy a shake now.

I don't think I'll ever be able to eat at McDonald's, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and-a Pizza Hut again. (Not that I'm a fast-food kind of guy anyway.)

Hmm... they failed to mention England's own contribution to colostomy-inducing quick cuisine: Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips. Wonder why?

Not to belittle her ingenuity --- quite an accomplishment! --- but it's been done. All Jesus references aside, when I was a little kid enduring swimming classes at the local YMCA, I distinctly recall one of the instructors showing off by walking on the water of the swimming pool with these huge Styrofoam "shoes" shaped like small boats. He flipped over a few times, but he did manage to actually get halfway across the pool lengthwise at least once.

Of course, we tadpoles weren't allowed to try this out.

The instructor seemed to have a difficult time moving forward and staying upright. I never saw him use the "water shoes" again (just borrowed for the day? Too frustrating? Had to get back to his job?). It's possible that this young lady made enough improvements on the earlier design (even if she was unaware of the earlier design) that her water shoes are actually easier to use.

This prank goes back before "Amelie," actually. Look in any good-sized bookstore's "Humor" section for books on pranks & practical jokes, and you'll probably find how-to instructions and quasi-historical data on the garden gnome prank.

For those who haven't seen "Amelie," it's a very nice French film from 2001 directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Delicatessen," "City of Lost Children," "Alien Resurrection") and starring newcomer Audrey Tatou as a shy waif who decides to secretly help other people (But will she help herself???). She livens up her father's life by stealing a gnome from his garden and sending it on a world cruise with a friend. The friend snaps photos of the gnome in various locations and sends them to Amelie's dad.

Similar and identical pranks have been played. Some consist of the victim receiving postcards from vacation spots signed "The Gnome." The gnome then reappears, usually sporting a shoe-polish "suntan" to make it look like it went to the tropics. In one instance in Australia, garden gnomes vanished from all over town --- and then were spotted one evening by a police officer on highway patrol. The gnomes had all been taken to a remote area in the desert and set up as if they were holding a council or something, with the largest gnome standing on a rock "addressing" the others, who were arranged in a ring.

I think I've heard of this. It's pretty standard in some places. If you look at ancient Egyptian artwork, for example, young children are almost always nude regardless of their social standing or the theme of the picture. It was just easier, I guess, than messing around with diapers, or for that matter clothing that they would outgrow all too quickly anyway. A number of years ago, I was watching Ingmar Bergman's film "The Seventh Seal" with my mother. (For those who don't know, it's a Swedish film about a knight of the Crusades who returns to find Sweden ravaged by bubonic plague. Throughout the film, he meets up with Death, who plays an ongoing game of chess with the knight.) In addition to the central characters and the knight's family & friends, there is a small family of traveling actors who provide philosophical commentary. The family has an infant child, and all he ever wears in the movie is a shirt. At some point I said, "Every time we see this baby, we're looking at his bare bottom." Mom, who knew a lot of Swedes from growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said, "I don't think they're really big on diapers in Sweden. Just let 'em run naked & free."

Cool! Reminds me of an animated segment from the good ol' days of TV's "Sesame Street." I feel a song coming on... "wwwwwWOW! One-two-three-FOUR-five, six-seven-eight-NINE-ten, eleven twelve... Doo, doo-doo-doo-di-do-do..." Kids who failed to watch "Sesame Street" but watch "Family Guy" might have seen the bit where Baby Stewie, encased in a plastic sphere, arrives late and tells of his harrowing day --- that was a parody of this classic bit of groovy 70s animation.

In my youth, I would have been content with the "Noah's Ark" conjecture. Of course, having researched this sort of thing for years, I find that any attempt to claim that an archaeological discovery "proves" a Biblical account is an example of the "if-then" fallacy (in logic).

Revtim's right about how long it takes for wood to petrify. A sample several thousands of years old might be rather heavy with absorbed minerals, but it would still be a long way from petrification.

Also, remember that the entire region is prone to flooding, and was even more prone in the past (when it was a little less arid). To people who mostly never traveled more than 50 miles from their birthplace, a major flood might seem to have engulfed the whole world.

Noah's Ark is not the only "Ark" story out there, either. Greek mythology includes a similar tale as part of the Prometheus story. The Babylonian epic "Gilgamesh" includes a flood story in which the Noah-like hero builds a wooden cube stocked with all sorts of animals. Frankly, in a region that got flooded like that, most people would have kept a boat for emergencies. Some would probably have built larger boats so they could save their livestock as well. There may be the remains of several "arks" scattered among the mountains; a large craft would have been impossible to steer and could easily have run aground.

As for the elevation --- plate tectonics. Those mountains weren't quite so high thousands of years ago. Earthquakes and volcanoes have plagued the region in the past, and pushed the mountains higher, and the debris along with them. (If you want another Biblical connection, there's your fire & brimstone that rained down on Sodom & Gomorrah. Does that mean these "sin cities" existed? We don't know. But in those days, the general consensus was that any city wiped out by a volcano must have been wicked and offended the gods or God. Fortunately, we don't think this way any more. Oh, wait, those people who claimed that New Orleans was "wicked" so that they wouldn't have to apologize for allowing the levees to deteriorate or have to actually work to help rebuild...)

Wow... The handful of people who have read my as-yet-unpublished manuscript "What Did YOU Do During the Apocalypse, Daddy?" might recall my description of a very similar gadget. It was a diode sign, like this, but it took up half the rear window of a VW Beetle. It had messages such as "BACK OFF," "PASS ME," "QUIT BLOWING YOUR HORN," "THANK YOU" and a one-finger salute. I think I formed the idea on my own while some putz was tailgating me and I couldn't seem to shake him.

A great many "direction labels" are somewhat arbitrary, although a few are based on some natural facts.

North is "up" on most maps simply because the earliest known cartographers who used magnetic compasses lived in the northern hemisphere. (It's quite possible that some very old maps did not equate north with "up;" but as more was learned about the world it made sense to put the newly-explored lands closer to the bottom of the page, as one would add new text below that which was written (another rather arbitrary convention!)... Although written text may run left-to-right, right-to-left or even top-to-bottom, I don't know of any that reads bottom-to-top (but there might be some.)

Horses are mounted from the left because most people are right-handed, and so men's swords were hung on the left for easy reach; mounting on the left keeps the sword from getting in the way during a mount. (This sword business also determined how men's shirts were buttoned. Women's shirts were then buttoned the opposite way. I heard something about women's buttons facilitating breast-feeding; but since that would be just as easy either way, I doubt it.) The decision to drive on the left in England was pretty much determined by the flip of a coin after haphazard driving laws caused a horrible jam-up when a draft horse died in the center of the road on London Bridge. However, the tradition of driving on the left predates this incident, as it (again with the swords) allowed a man to easily defend himself should he encounter an armed opponent. (Conversely, if a friend met a friend, they could high-five with their right hands.) Because horses were mounted on the left, hitching-posts were situated on the left side of roads, so one wouldn't have to cross the street to park one's horse. Nobody is sure about why Americans (and the French) decided to drive on the right, but it is believed by some that Napoleon Bonaparte made the switch, and extended it to all lands that he conquered, as a means of "marking his territory," being contrary, and making travel within his lands difficult for anyone coming in from outside. (This was the same reason Russian railroad tracks were deliberately spaced differently from tracks of neighboring countries.)

Although musical notes of shorter wavelength are considered "high" notes, the Ancient Greeks saw them as "low" notes (and "low" notes as "high" notes.) And the fellow who invented the Celcius thermometer decided that water would boil at 0 and freeze at 100; this was "corrected" immediately after his death as it seemed so counter-intuitive.

Greetings and gestures are extremely arbitrary from culture to culture. At one time, learned men thought sign-language was universal; but attempts to converse in it proved so useless that the idea became the source of jokes.

Therefore, since direction labels in space are rather arbitrary, it makes sense that direction labels applied to time would be arbitrary as well. The Australian Aborigines refer to their mythos as "the Dreamtime" because it is a distant past that still takes place and can be visited. The passage of time is not quite so linear! In many cultures, the future is seen as "ahead" and the past "behind" for the same reasons that travelers on a road refer to where they've been as "behind" and where they're going as "ahead." However, the "You can't see the future, so it must be behind you" explanation is equally valid.

I think it's amazing how varied human culture can be. It certainly illustrates how much of what we believe to be true and correct reflects our upbringing more than anything else.

I KNEW I'd seen this before! It can be found (besides on YouTube) in the Star Trek: The Next Generation complete DVD set. Season 5, disc 7. Go to "Mission Logs: Year Five" and select "A Tribute to Gene Roddenberry." Mr. Roddenberry died during the shooting of TNG's 5th season, and many folks pay their respects in this little tribute. It ends with this hilarious vaudeville-style number by Patrick "Capt. Picard" Stewart.

Ah, the bad computer predictions! The rejection slips of the computer world. The great classics of world literature all got lots of rejections before someone decided to publish them, and the same thing happened to the computer. It all goes to show just how difficult it is to actually see the future, what plans will work and what will not.

The microprocessor was developed in 1968; early that year the "Star Trek" episode "The Ultimate Computer" aired, featuring the Mark 7, a supercomputer the size of a small steamer trunk that apparently could be rolled about by hand. Quite a bit smaller and more manageable than a Cray, which was the Rolls Royce of supercomputers into the late 1980s at least. (I imagine they're smaller now, but I haven't checked.) So the idea of computers becoming smaller was certainly in place by then. How much smaller, though, was harder to predict, since microcircuitry engraving techniques have improved since then, rendering microprocessors even smaller.

One thing I find fascinating (the Spock reference was unintentional) is that I have not yet read or heard of a science-fiction story from before the late 1980s that makes any mention of an Internet or World-Wide Web. The Internet has been around since the 1960s, when computers were still the domain of scientists and the military. (I still remember, in the late 1970s, my Dad having a bulky, monitor-less computer terminal delivered to our house from work after he broke his knees. He took our kitchen phone off the hook, stuck it onto two rubber cups sticking out of the terminal, and it communicated with another computer over the telephone lines --- the Internet!) It wasn't until after PCs and Macs entered the home that the Internet and the Web entered science-fiction. A "futuristic" communication system that has actually become part of our lives, and it managed to avoid mention in visions of the future until it was already here and "commonplace." Whenever a fellow sci-fi writer gripes about trying to write about the future and make accurate predictions, I cite this example and tell him or her not to worry.

If anyone knows of a sci-fi story from before the late 1980s that DOES mention the Internet or Web, even by a different name, I'd love to hear about it. And if anyone finds such a story from before the 1960s, I'd REALLY love to hear about it!

Cool! However, the article mentions no artifacts confirming or implying the existence of King Ajax. These palaces often stood for centuries before falling to ruin, and were home to several kings over time. Claiming to have found "the palace of Ajax" would be a bit like finding ruins on a spot traditionally thought to have been Camelot, and claiming to have found Arthur's castle. One may have found a castle, but without some solid archaeological evidence from the site, Arthur himself remains a powerful legend and not a flesh-&-blood man.

The "palace of Ajax" certainly is the right age and in a plausible location. We've found evidence of a series of wars between Troy and the various Greek kingdoms of ancient times. (Although a beauty contest between goddesses, with Paris as judge and Helen as prize, is blamed for the war, it seems to have been caused by trade disputes. Yeah, Homer's version is much more fun to read!) A palace, probably belonging to King Nestor, has been found, along with a drinking-cup of the correct age with an inscription that translates partly as "I am the cup of Nestor..." Unless Nestor was already a legend at the time of the inscribing, the cup might be evidence of his existence. Since the rest of the inscription is something like "He who drinks from me becomes slave to Aphrodite," and makes no mention of Nestor's greatness or his legendary part in the Trojan War, the cup is probably genuine, and the inscription mainly a precaution against theft.

The artifacts found in Ajax's palace are certainly fascinating and illustrate the wide range of locations whose goods found their way to Greece. (The armor from Rameses II may have been a gift, or may have been a black-market item, as many pharaohs' tombs were robbed.) We need to find a sort of "Nestor's cup," though, before deciding that Ajax is more than a legend.

Undoubtedly the inspiration for the "organ" that the Sultan plays in Terry Gilliam's film "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen." In an early sequence, the Sultan is "entertaining" the Baron with a performance of a little opera he's composed called "The Torturer's Apprentice." The instrument he plays looks like a complicated organ and contains a cage full of wretched prisoners. As the Sultan presses the keys and pulls the stops, spikes poke into various prisoners to make them yelp with pain.

As someone who has been clawed trying to shoo a cat downstairs against its will, I can take comfort in the fact that this non-ASPCA-approved instrument probably never actually was successfully used. Would your cat allow itself to be crammed into its little cage? Or stay in it once the poking began? Also, there are only 7 cats there, but 31 keys.

Hey... Pretty sharp, Keith! I think you nailed it. Kind of reminds me of the "face on Mars" picture...

Cool photo! Highly improbable, though. Given the number of ground-level collisions that occur, one would still need to earn an aviator's license before flying anything, even if it looks like a car. The photograph could easily have been faked, of course; the first step in confirming this would be to look at an enlarged hi-rez copy and see if the pixel-pattern changes where the flying car is. Another possibility is that the car is actually a display mounted atop a pole, as one might find at a used-car dealership. Given the apparent time-of-day indicated by the shadows, the pole's shadow would be eclipsed by the car's in this photo, and a reflective metal pole of steel would be virtually invisible in a picture of this quality.

Even still... It would make traffic jams and parallel parking a lot easier to deal with! I like.