Q. English and French dogs sound the same, but do they sound the same in English and French? A. The same dog that goes 'bow wow', 'arf', 'woof' or 'ruff ruff' in English will go 'ouah ouah' in French, 'woef' in Dutch, 'hau hau' in Finnish, 'wau wau' in German, 'wang wang' in Mandarin, 'bup bup' in Catalan, 'wanwan' in Japanese, 'guau guau' in Spanish and 'vov vov' in Swedish, says linguist Catherine N. Ball of Georgetown University.
In English birds call out 'tweet tweet', in Arabic 'twit twit', in Finnish 'tsirp tsirp', in Korean 'ji-ji-bae-bae', in Spanish (Argentina) 'pi pi'. Cows 'moo' in English, Turkish, Arabic, Greek or Hebrew; 'muuuu' in Portuguese, Italian, Ukrainian, Swedish or Spanish (Spain, Argentina); 'mu mu' in Mandarin, 'maw maw' in Thai, 'booooo' in Hungarian, 'boeh' in Dutch. And busy bees 'bzzzz' in English, French, Finnish, Dutch, Hebrew or Spanish (Spain, Argentina); 'bzz bzz' in Swedish; 'bezzzz' in Arabic; 'dzzz' in Ukrainian; 'vzzzz' in Turkish; 'zzzzzz' in Italian; 'bunbun' in Japanese; 'boong-boong' in Korean; 'summ summ' in German.
Q. Guys, do you measure up in the changing room? A. Male anxiety about size is virtually universal, says Dr James Glenn in the Journal Of The American Medical Association. But how many guys know what's average? How many know there are really two averages, 10 centimetres for the quiescent state, 15 cm for ready-to-go? Or that guys can be below average on one measure while average or even above average on the other? And how many know that the typical patient seeking surgical 'augmentation' not only doesn't have a 'microphallus', clinically defined as under 10 cm in the excitatory state, but is in fact average or bigger. Apparently, most of these patients are seeking 'display effect', something akin to those few cultures where males from a very young age attach heavy weights, adding length sufficient for tying into a knot.
Q. Quick: if given the choice, would you take a new Ferrari or a stack of pennies that doubles every day for a month (a penny on day one, two pennies on day two, four on day three, eight on day four, etc)? A. Take the pennies. Using a calculator, you'll see that by the 31st of the month, you'd have over a billion pennies worth more than GBP10 million (GBP5 million for a 30-day month). The stack - if it didn't topple - would reach nearly 1,600 kilometres into the sky, having surpassed the value of the Ferrari on day 25 and made you a millionaire on day 28.
Q. On Niwot Ridge, in Colorado, at an elevation of 3,840 metres, there is a research station outhouse that never needs servicing. What's the secret? A. The place is licked clean on a regular basis by neighbouring marmots, says Anthony R. Ives, University of Wisconsin-Madison zoologist. This appears to be totally safe for the marmots but maybe not so for the humans. 'During an undergraduate class outing, one of the students was seen bolting from the outhouse with her trousers barely up, yelling, 'I felt whiskers!' '