Things I learned this week 6 Aug

• It would take 8,028,680 LEGO bricks at a cost of $802,868 to build my house.
• According to a 1992 law, women in New York have the right to go topless anywhere a man can, so long as they're not engaged in commerce. Most New Yorkers don't know this is the case.
• Accelerated Christian Education's high school biology textbook, used in some private religions schools, argues Darwin's theory of evolution doesn't hold water if dinosaurs co-exist with man. Apparently they do - to this day. The proof? Nessie.
• One of the factors that led to the deterioration of flavour in commercial tomatoes was the breeding out of green shoulders (the part nearest the stem) of older varieties (pre-1930).
• Liqui-gels are one of the biggest gimmicks to get you to pay more for a simple pain killer.
• The earliest form of printing was woodblock printing, with existing examples from China dating to before 220AD.
• The top 3 complaints business travellers have about hotels are expensive internet; insufficient AC outlets and slow internet.
• Our eyes don't scan smoothly across a scene, they observe a series of images. You can witness this phenomenon in another person by getting them to pan across a scene while watching their eye movement. It will be jerky. However, the eye is capable of panning smoothly if you track a moving object. You can witness this phenomenon too by watching the other person tracking a moving object, like a person walking by.
• The Clock Tower, better known as Big Ben, is to be renamed Elizabeth Tower.
• Calgary will soon have the longest commercial runway in Canada, at 14,000 feet long. It will easily handle the Airbus A380 and could even allow simultaneous takeoffs and landings for smaller aircraft.
• There are Olympics wi-fi police in London, who seek out unauthorized wi-fi signals and shut them down. Why? Because Olympic partner BT runs some 1,500 paid hotspots at the event and doesn't want any free competition.
• It's so hot in Oklahoma, street light globes are melting.