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Saw a commercial for the new Mazda RX-8 tonight, which highlighted that brand's use of the Wankel Rotary engine. Hadn't thought about that engine in a long time and started wondering if any motorcycle company had ever tried using it as a power plant. You'd think the Rotary engine would be a natural -- no valves to adjust, fewer moving parts, less vibration (with counterbalancers), possibly better gas mileage, etc. Did a search and found out that it HAS been tried briefly by at least one (and probably more) company, Suzuki, during the mid 70s. Turn out the design didn't...

I just delivered my son to the Citadel in Charleston SC this weekend, and as a Knob , during dining (MESS)....he's challenged by the upperclassmen to provide totally useless but interesting facts.

1. A rat can last longer without water than a camel. 2. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself. 3. The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle. 4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top. 5. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate. 6. A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why. 7. A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2"...

1 If your precocious nine-year old daughter asked you to place one penny on the first square of a chessboard, two pence on the second square, four pence on the third, and so on, you would need to put £92 million billion on the 64th and final square. 2 Prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 13 and so on ...) are divisible only by themselves and the number one. The largest prime number yet discovered has 2,098,960 digits. If we were to print nothing except this number across all sections of today's and next week's Observers (containing around 250,000...

<p>California has 35 million people, the globe's fifth-or sixth-most-powerful economy, enormous conflicts over water, land use, transportation, education, health care and dozens of other vital social and economic matters -- including, lest we forget, a state budget deficit so huge it almost defies description.</p>

A poster at another site I frequent posted the following: "Which pro athlete won a championship in both his rookie AND final year, but none in between? The only hints that the sadistic bastard gave us before leaving were: - it is NOT a hockey player. - the player played at least seven years."

President Congresses Regular Vetoes Pocket Vetoes Total Vetoes Vetoes Overridden George Washington 1st- 4th 2 ..... 2 ..... John Adams 5th-6th ..... ..... ..... ..... Thomas Jefferson 7th-10th ..... ..... ..... ..... James Madison 11th-14th 5 2 7 ..... James Monroe 15th-18th 1 ..... 1 ..... John Quincy Adams 19th-20th ..... ..... ..... ..... Andrew Jackson 21st-24th 5 7 12 ..... Martin Van Buren 25th-26th ..... 1 1 ..... William Henry Harrison 27th ..... ..... ..... ..... John Tyler 27th-28th 6 4 10 1 James K. Polk 29th-30th 2 1 3 ..... Zachary Taylor 31st ..... ..... ..... ........