Punctuate.

I don't recall the last time punctuation was brought up as a topic of conversation at a party.  And I'm fairly certain "You know what this world needs?... Better punctuation!" is a pick up line destined for failure.  Yet Lynne Truss has sold millions of copies of her book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." The title is based on a panda bear joke that is bound to make at least every English teacher I know laugh. From www.eatsshootsandleaves.com:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

This is an admittedly bad English-grammar-nerd joke. So if that didn't entertain you, here is a real panda that eats shoots and leaves.

There are, in fact, a lot of entertaining examples of how punctuation can affect the meaning of a sentence. My favorite:

A woman without her man is nothing.

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Which do you like better?

I hope my punctuation has been correct....

Noggin Fodder
www.nogfod.com
Feed your head.

Entertaining Gas: Sulfur Hexaflouride

In this YouTube video, an unknown hand demonstrates the density of an invisible gas, sulfur hexaflouride.  The gas is so dense that an aluminum foil boat floats on it, like water.  The boat is sunk when the dense gas is scooped out of the tank and into the boat.  


Everyone, at some point, has given themselves a Chipmunks voice by inhaling helium. Helium is much less dense than air and when it passes through your vocal cords they vibrate at a higher frequency giving your voice a higher pitch. Sulfur hexaflouride passing over your vocal cords makes them vibrate much more slowly, giving you a deep voice.  In this video, some guy in a white lab coat demonstrates the effects of sulfur hexaflouride on your voice. He knows his science, but get a tad nervous. As he trips on his words he inhales a little too much gas and nearly vomits. The gas also sinks to the bottom of your lungs and would stay there unless you turn upside down to let it fall out (also an entertaining part of the video).


Enjoy,
berg

Noggin Fodder
www.nogfod.com
Feed your head.