trivia

1. Most Romans were on welfare. 2. Many Roman citizens living in Rome were not 'Italian', but anything from German to Indian. 3. Rome had an African Emperor, Severus. 4. The last Roman Emperor had the same name as the first - Romulus. 5. Rome was only ever defeated by the French and the Romanians. 6. Rome had a population of a million. 7. Julius Caesar wiped out a million French in genocide. 8. Romans thought that pants were girly. 9. Pagan Rome could absorb other cultures by absorbing their gods. Monotheism made this impossible, and martyrdom made it impossible to attack. Christianity was one of the major reasons that Rome ultimately fell and Europe slipped into the dark ages. It only really emerged when secular culture and scientific reason developed in Italy after the middle ages with people like Galileo. Frontpage -- The Ammianus Marcellinus Online Project

The real reason that I wanted to build Wists, was to re-enact a long time fantasy where I would be asked to appear on Desert Island Disks, a long running radio show in the UK where you had to imagine you were stranded on a desert island with your favorite songs and had to explain why you chose them and what they meant to you. So, being a list geek, I have put together my Desert Island Wists, tagging my favorite books, movies, albums and, of course, buildings with the tags topten=buildings etc. (Desert Island Disks only allows you 8 songs and 1 book - but this is the web and I want 10 of everything). Here they are: My Top Ten Buildings My Top Ten Movies My Top Ten Books My Top Ten Albums

No axe to grind here, was just curious, so dug around the web for some data: Cost of Iraq/Afghan war so far: $300 billion (From end 2001 till end of this year) Cost per year: $75 billion Number of tax payers in the US: 130 million Average cost of campaign per taxpayer: $2300 Average cost per year per taxpayer: $575 Average cut for Bush's 2003 tax cuts, per person: $1,083 (Median, i.e. most likely tax cut per person was $227)

Instructions on chopsticks are always fascinating, but this was a classic: From disposable chopsticks in a Thai restaurant: "Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticke the traditional and trpical of Chinese glorious history and cultual" [sic]

Wikipedia now has an entry for Web 2.0. Call me old fashioned, but since everything on the web seems to be in Beta for years, shouldn't Web 1.0 now be called Web 0.9? I think I'll call Wists, Wists Gamma.

Google Video Search, boing boing : ... Eh-oh! Hee Hee! [Humming] dipsy! Hee Hee! Hee Hee... Whee! Wow! Yay! Ha Ha! Dipsy! Hee Hee! Ooh! Look! Yay, dipsy! Narrator: Circle. [Boing boing] [boing boing] [Boing boing] [boing boing] [squish] [squish] Hee Hee! Laa-laa Ball! Hee Hee! Uh-oh! Hee Hee! Ooh! Oh, dear! Hee Hee!...

PFK Fish News | Deep sea fish in hoax tsunami email "An email containing photographs of bizarre-looking deep sea fish reportedly washed up on Thailand's Phuket beach after the tsunami actually contains images of fish collected during a study undertaken in 2003." Nonetheless the fish are deeply weird and interesting, check them out.

BBC: dentists find nail in skull. OK - so that is pretty weird to start with, but - "Doctors at the hospital said it was the second time a patient had failed to notice a nailgun had fired a nail into their heads." !!!

"after months of research, experts believe they may now hold the key to the 250-year-old code, which is carved on a monument at the Earl of Lichfield's Shugborough Hall estate in Staffordshire. The Shepherd's Monument, commissioned in 1748 by the then earl, Thomas Anson, features a carved image of a Nicolas Poussin painting with the letters D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. underneath. The cryptic inscription was rumoured to point to the location of the Holy Grail - the cup Jesus is said to have used at the Last Supper." Two things: 1. Any code this short is difficult to crack without resorting to other clues in the context. 2. There is a huge incentive to subconsciously or consciously accept the context of the connections to the Holy Grail, particularly at a time when the Da Vinci Code book is generating a boatload of cash around Holy Grail seeker tourist sites. Perhaps D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. means: DaVinci...

At Web 2.0 and Jeff Bezos is presenting, showing his Amazon homepage. In the top right corner is 'Jeff's Gold Box'. Presumably Jeff's Gold Box contains, well, gold bars.

If you take the current Olympic medals table (ranked by number of golds) and re-order the top 20 gold medal winners to those listed by number of people per gold medal, according to population figures, the rankings are somewhat different. By this measure, the leader, Australia, is 7 times more athletic than the US and 30 times more than China. Greece is doing well with its home advantage at number 2. Rank: 1. Australia 2. Greece 3. Romania 4. Sweden 5. Hungary 6. Belarus 7. Netherlands 8. Ukraine 9. France 10. Italy 11. South Korea 12. Japan 13. Great Britain 14. Germany 15. United States 16. Russia 17. Canada 18. Poland 19.Turkey 20. China

Classic - reverse air rage on an Aeroflot flight as drunk cabin staff attack a passenger, giving him a black eye. "... a medical examination after the flight showed the cabin attendants were heavily intoxicated. Another passenger told a forum on the avia.ru civil aviation website that the stewards distributed in-flight meals only when the plane started its descent, and managed to spill large quantities of food on the floor. " BBC: 'Reverse air-rage' on Russian jet