Things I learned lately 2 Dec

• El Nino is so far having an effect on Alberta weather this late fall. Although we’ve had snow, it’s not staying. Edmonton has had no snow in all of November, which hasn’t happened in 100 years. If this continues, we may have a brown Christmas. It’s still up in the air how this will manifest beyond December, but the overall winter forecast is dry and mild. Not a happy forecast for farming or water summer supply.
• Google is now powering one of its data centres in Nevada with geothermal energy. Their goal is to use only carbon free energy by 2030. The advantage of geothermal is availability 24/7.
• There’s no proof that ‘nifty’ is short for magnificent, but I’m gonna keep claiming it anyway.
• The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered lone planets that don’t seem to belong to any star in the Orion nebula. “That’s no planet…….”
• The boys from “This is Spinal Tap” are making a sequel. They should call it Part II. Because it looks like ‘11’.
• Brazil’s northernmost point is closer to every country in the Americas, including Canada, than to its southernmost point.
• The country flag with the most colours is Belize.
• There are more than 60 million motorcycles in Vietnam.
• Bhutan is the only carbon-negative country in the world.
• Finland has the highest consumption of milk per capita.
• In Costa Rica, between 10pm and 5am, it is perfectly legal to run a red light.
• In Bolivia, if you’re single, you can’t vote until you’re 21. If you’re married, you can vote at 18.
• Many of the 5,000 varieties of potatoes in the world can be found in Peru.
• At 7,821 km, the Trans Canada highway is the longest national highway in the world.
• There are about 5 million vending machines in Japan. There are almost 7 million in the US, but the US is 25 times larger than Japan by land mass.
• Fanta started as a German soda brand, as a Coca-Cola alternative in 1940 due to the American trade embargo of Nazi Germany, which affected the availability of Coca-Cola ingredients. Fanta orange was developed in Italy in 1955.
• Denmark spends 8% of its GDP on education.