How do clams reproduce?

Search: oysters bivalves procreate



Why: On reddit, Oyster eggs:

Answer: Bivalves (clams, cockles, mussels, oysters, scallops, etc.) reproduce by external fertilization!

Marine bivalves reproduce by releasing prodigious numbers of eggs and sperm into the water, where external fertilization occurs. The fertilized eggs then float in the surface plankton.



Within 48 hours after fertilization, the embryo develops into a minute, planktonic, trochophore larvae. This stage is followed by another larval form, the veliger, which settles to the seabed and transforms into an adult.



In freshwater bivalves, the eggs are retained in the gill chambers of the female, where they undergo fertilization and develop into a peculiar larval form, the glochidium.



Upon its release, the larva attaches to passing fish, and lives as an ectoparasite for several weeks before settling.

Oyster eggs are commonly sold as food for coral in saltwater aquariums.



Source: Science



The More You Know: But how do pearls form? First, anatomy:

Then (from HowStuffWorks):

As the oyster grows in size, its shell must also grow. The mantle is an organ that produces the oyster's shell, using minerals from the oyster's food. The material created by the mantle is called nacre. Nacre lines the inside of the shell.

­The formation of a natural pearl begins when a foreign substance slips into the oyster between the mantle and the shell, which irritate­s the mantle. It's kind of like the oyster getting a splinter. The oyster's natural reaction is to cover up that irritant to protect itself. The man­tle covers the irritant with layers of the same nacre substance that is used to create the shell. This eventually forms a pearl.

So a pearl is a foreign substance covered with layers of nacre. Most pearls that we see in jewelry stores are nicely rounded objects, which are the most valuable ones. Not all pearls turn out so well. Some pearls form in an uneven shape -- these are called baroque pearls. Pearls, as you've probably noticed, come in a variety of various colors, including white, black, gray, red, blue and green.

So basically, pearls are cysts that the oysters make to protect themselves from foreign objects. Some farmers even irritate their oysters on purpose to create "cultured pearls"!

Fun fact: Oysters are among the only frutti di mare that I don't eat.

Where is the Aral Sea?

Search: aral sea



Why: On reddit, TIL That the disappearing of the Aral Sea has left behind a desert filled with shipwrecks:

Muynak is a city in northern Karakalpakstan in western Uzbekistan. Home to only a few thousand residents at most, Muynak's population has been declining precipitously since the 1980s due to the recession of the Aral Sea.

But I am American and t.f. haven't looked at a world map since AP History in 12th grade.



Answer: Over here!

Source: Google Maps



The More You Know: From that page:

The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth-largest saline body of water, it has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s, after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union irrigation projects. By 2004, the sea had shrunk to 25% of its original surface area, and a nearly fivefold increase in salinity had killed most of its natural flora and fauna. By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into three separate lakes, two of which are too salty to support fish. The once prosperous fishing industry has been virtually destroyed, and former fishing towns along the original shores have become ship graveyards. With this collapse has come unemployment and economic hardship.

How do you remove chewing gum from glass?

Search: gum off a window



Why: I had an accident. Man, that new Mentos gum sure is sticky.

Answer: There are 4 ways!

1. Use canned air. You can buy it at an office supply store to shoot dust and crumbs out of your keyboard. Blast some on the gum, and it should harden and pull right off.
2. Freeze it. Rub an ice cube along the gum, holding it in place until the gum freezes and the ice cube melts. The gum should come right off.
3. Zap it with bug and tar remover. Sold at auto supply stores, this stuff is designed to removed smushed bugs and tar.
   
   
4. Use official gum-remover like they do at movie theaters. You can buy it at an industrial cleaning supply store.
   
   

Source: eHow



The More You Know: Canned air comes out at -26 degrees Celsius / -14.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Here's a list of 101 Things to Do with It!

Who sings the song in that Payless commercial?

Search: i am a paleontologist payless

Why: I know a Future Paleontologist of America who might just need that to be her official theme song.

Answer: They Might Be Giants!!! YEEESSSS!!! (and it says "w/ Danny Weinkauf," who is always in the band anyway... so I don't know).

This is one of the only bands anyone at my camp ever listened to in 1995-7. (The other one was REM.)

Oh my god, do you guys remember Dial-a-Song?

Lyrics go like:

I love diggin' in the dirt
With just a pick and brush
Finding fossils is my aim
So I'm never in a rush
'Cause the treasures that I seek
Are rare and ancient things
Like Velociraptor's jaw
Or Archaeopteryx's wings

Now all the kids
Who wanna see 'em
Are lining up
At our museum

I am a paleontologist
That's who I am

Could it be an herbivore
Crushing plants with rounded teeth
Or ferocious carnivore
Who moves so quickly on its feet
It's like pieces of a puzzle
That I love to try and solve
It's so fun to think about
How a species has evolved

Is it a T-rex? (I keep digging, digging, digging, digging)
Maybe a Triceratops? (digging)
Or a Carnotaur? (digging)
Pachycephalosaurus?

Source: YouTube

The More You Know: Speaking of sequins, sometimes I think about how there were actual flying dinosaurs, like dinosaurs who could fucking FLY, and they were huge and wanted to - and could - gobble you up in a single snap o' the jaw. Can you imagine that today? Look out your window right now and imagine a dinosaur flying around.

(Oatmeal)

BUT it turns out that the fearsome pterodactyl was not a dinosaur at all, just a regular ol' "prehistoric winged lizard." Boring!

Pterosaurs are sometimes referred to in the popular media as dinosaurs, but this is incorrect. The term "dinosaur" is properly restricted to a certain group of reptiles with a unique upright stance (superorder Dinosauria, which includes birds), and therefore excludes the pterosaurs, as well as the various groups of extinct marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs.

Oh, it's also not called a pterodactyl - it's a pterosaur. At least 60 genera of pterosaurs have been found to date, ranging from the size of a small bird to wingspans in excess of 10 meters (33 ft).

What are Omega Fatty Acids supposed to do?

Search: omega fatty acids

Why: I went into Costco to get a lifetime supply of paper towels, and I came out with 180 of these.

Answer: Oh, lots. For example!:

• Build healthy cells!
• Boost the immune system!
  
• Maintain brain and nerve function!
• Lower the risk of heart disease! and stroke!
  
• Protect against type 2 diabetes! and Alzheimer's disease!
• Reduce symptoms of hypertension!, depression!, ADHD!, joint pain!, and some skin ailments!

High praise indeed! In fact, they are so important that they're called essential fatty acids. But here's the kicker! Our bodies can't produce them; we can only get them from food. So much for intelligent design.

Here's a secret: Saturated fats, which come mostly from animal sources, raise LDL, the form of cholesterol that clogs arteries. Unsaturated fats from vegetable oils, nuts, and fish can help lower cholesterol levels. To up your omegas and down your saturated fats, switch from butter to vegetable, olive, or canola oil. This is what the hell canola looks like, btw (it's genetically modified rapeseed, developed to resist herbicides):

Each canola seed is approximately 40% oil. According to this warrior:

Initially, the rapeseed plant was used to create oil for lubrication, particularly in World War II. After the war farmers were left to figure out what to do with their surplus. Rapeseed oil contains high levels of Erucic Acid which is toxic to humans, so scientists began to create, cross-breed, and use selective breeding to create a consumable oil. Originally called LEAR (low erucic acid rapeseed), someone thought about their brand image and changed it to Canola Oil. The name ‘canola’ was derived from ‘Canadian oil, low acid’ in 1978.

Source: WebMD (also this one)

The More You Know: Do you have any idea what cholesterol is? Me neither. Let's learn from KidsHealth:

Cholesterol is a type of fat found in your blood. Your liver makes cholesterol for your body, and you can get it from foods you eat.You need some cholesterol to help your brain, skin, and other organs grow and do their jobs in the body.

But eating too much of it is a bad idea, especially for people whose bodies already make too much cholesterol. It floats around in your blood and can get into the walls of the blood vessels and stay there. If you have too much cholesterol in your bloodstream, a lot can collect in the blood vessel walls, clog the blood vessels, and keep blood from moving freely the way it's supposed to. If the clogging gets worse over many years, it can cause damage to important body parts, like the heart (heart attack) and brain (stroke).

Two Types of Cholesterol

There are two main types of cholesterol: HDL and LDL. Most cholesterol is LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol. LDL cholesterol is more likely to clog blood vessels because it carries the cholesterol away from the liver into the bloodstream, where it can stick to the blood vessels. HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, on the other hand, carries the cholesterol back to the liver where it is broken down.

Here's a way to remember the difference: the LDL cholesterol is the bad kind, so call it "lousy" cholesterol — "l" for lousy. The HDL is the good cholesterol, so remember it as "healthy" cholesterol — "h" for healthy.

I hope you wrote that down.

What's a lede?

Search: bury the lede

Why: In "We Opened the Relationship, and It Epic-Failed" by MC Housework on xoJane:

I saw no reason to bury the lede with this post.

Answer: It's the "lead" of a story - just an alternate spelling!

Some American English writers use the spelling lede, from the archaic English, to avoid confusion with the printing press type formerly made from the metal lead or the related typographical term leading.

That's "ledding." And then:

Leading refers to the distance between the baselines of successive lines of type. The term originated in the days of hand-typesetting, when thin strips of lead were inserted into the formes to increase the vertical distance between lines of type.

Anyway, to "bury the lede" is to begin a story with details of secondary importance to the reader while postponing more essential points or facts. Boring. Sounds like somebody went to journalism school!

Ostriches don't really bury their heads in the sand. That's an urban legend. But:

If threatened while sitting on the nest, which is simply a cavity scooped in the earth, the hen presses her long neck flat along the ground, blending in with the background.

So where does the myth come from?

Ostriches swallow sand and pebbles to help grind up food in their stomachs. This means they have to bend down and briefly stick their heads in the earth to collect the pebbles. Bingo! Another false myth is born.

More animal myths dispelled here.

Source: Wiktionary, Wikipedia

The More You Know: Speaking of lead ("led"), it has kind of never been actually been used to make pencils. That's another urban legend. The ancient Romans used lead styluses to make light, but legible marks on papyrus. But by the 1500s, people had started wrapping graphite sticks in string because it left darker marks. Wood and graphite pencils came in the 1600s. Behold!

What's the name of that disorder where you can't recognize faces?

Search: disorder can't tell faces apart

Why: Chandler basically just asked me if Jude Law and Andre the Giant were the same person. Like, based on their facial features. Racial!

Answer: Prosopagnosia! (from Greek: prosopon = "face," agnosia = "inabilty to recognise/identify familiar people or objects"

I am reading this guy Bill's personal site about his prosopagnosia. Here is what he has to say:

I was born with a condition that makes it difficult for me to recognize faces. There is a small part of the brain that is dedicated to that job, and though it is small, when it comes to recognizing faces, it is very very good. In me, that part doesn't work, making me blind to all but the most familiar of faces. To help you understand this, let me compare it to two conditions you are probably more familiar with.

People who are "tone deaf" are not deaf to tones. They can hear tones, they just can't tell them apart. People who are "color blind" can see things that are in color. They just can't tell colors apart. Similarly, I can see faces. I just can't tell them apart.

"Face blindness" is either associated with damage to the temporal lobe or it is congenital, in which case it actually runs in families. It also usually comes along with a bunch of other neurological conditions - not specific ones, just other ones. Bill says (eloquently; you should read this someday):

When I was a kid my dad would bring home geese he had shot, and we'd have to eat them with care because we never knew where the pellets would show up. Every goose would have them, though. And that's how it often is with neurological stuff. Each guy who gets blasted gets his own unique bundle of problems depending on where the pellets ended up. I got distorted hearing, an unusual walking gait, face blindness of course, and a few other minor things that really don't affect my life much.

A lot of face blind people have Asperger's (Bill doesn't), and many have "topographic agnosia," which is an inability to visualize geographical space - the literal inability to read a map.

When he was young in the 50s and 60s, he learned how to tell people apart by the jeans they wore every day and, later, how long their dirty hippie hair was. He tells a few anecdotes where he doesn't recognize a police woman directing traffic or a park ranger (he thought big hat = cowboy), though those sound like bigger issues than just not distinguishing facial features, right? I don't know.

Anyway, because of the a disproportionate number of people with face blindness are gay men with long hair (gay longhairs). Take that to trivia night!

Source: Wikipedia, Face Blind!, Neurophilosophy

The More You Know: "Tip of the tongue" phenomenon - failure to retrieve a word from memory - is called dysnomia when it is a learning disability present since childhood, but anomia when acquired by brain damage. I can never remember that. In French, it's called presque vu, "almost seen."

What's the rest of the song "I love you, a bushel and a peck"?

Search: bushel and a peck

Why: This morning, (this might make you throw up; sorry) Chandler sang the first lines thusly:

I love you, a bushel and a peck
A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck

And then he stopped. So I continued:

A hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap
A barrel and a heap, and I'm talkin in my sleep
About yooou

And he said, "There's more to that song? My mom only knew the first 2 lines."

And I think maybe my mom only knew the first 5 lines.

Answer: Oh my goodness, it's a whole song. My world just got upended. And it's from Guys and Dolls, which I've seen several times (on stage; it's not in the movie). It was written for Guys and Dolls in 1950, and a recording by Perry Como and Betty Hutton was on the charts for 18 weeks that year.

More recently, here's Jane Krakowski singing it / stripping:

Hoo! Lyrics go like:

My heart is leapin'!
I'm having trouble sleepin'!
'Cause I love you, a bushel and a peck
You bet your pretty neck I do!
Doodle oodle oodle oo.

I love you, a bushel and a peck
A bushel and a peck, go and beats me all to heck!
Beats me all to heck how I'll ever tend the farm
Ever tend the farm when I want to keep my
Arms - about you

The cows and chickens
are goin' to the dickens!
'Cause I love you a bushel and a peck
You bet your pretty neck I do

Source: All Musicals,

The More You Know: Look how darling Google is:

A bushel is a unit of dry volume = 8 dry / "corn" gallons. A peck is 2 dry gallons, 8 dry quarts, or 16 dry pints.

How can you tell a leopard from a cheetah?

Search: leopard cheetah

Why: I showed Katrina this picture,

and then this happened:

And then this happened:

And then this happened.

Anyway.

Answer: Their spots are way different!

The Quick Trick: It’s all in the spots. Cheetahs have simple black spots, while leopards have a more complex pattern.

They both live in sub-Saharan Africa. Points of note:

Cheetahs

• Have solid black round / oval spots
• Have black "tear lines" that run from their eyes to their mouths to keep sunlight out of their eyes
• Are smaller lankier than other big cats (and are not in the genus Panthera, like lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars)
• Hunt during the day
• Rely on bursts of speed
• Move their same-sided legs together (both left, then both right)
• Purr when they inhale
• Can't roar

Leopards

• Have black and brown clustery spots called "rosettes" that simulate moving shadows
• Have spots on their faces
  
• Are gigantic
  
• Rely on "surprise attacks"
• Drag their prey up trees so they can eat at their leisure
• Move their legs in diagonal pairs (front left-back right, front right-back left)
• Only purr when exhaling
• Roar
  

But which has cuter kittens?

(Cheetahs.)

Source: Mental Floss

The More You Know: But what about jaguars! They live in South America.

Jaguars

• Have fewer larger rosettes with black spots in the middle
• Have rounder heads and shorter limbs than leopards
• Are the strongest of all the big cats
• Bite directly through the skulls of their prey
• Are goddamn enormous
  

What is catarrh?

Search: catarrh

Why: On this chart from I Love Charts:

Answer: It's a disorder of your breathing tubes! The infection makes everything kind of phlegmy.

Pathology . inflammation of a mucous membrane, especially of the respiratory tract, accompanied by excessive secretions.

A catarrh blockage may result in discomfort with (and what is known as ear fear of):

• elevators
• airplanes
• traveling at elevation
• swimming pools and jumping baths

and other activities associated with a change in pressure.

Source: Dictionary.com, Wikipedia

The More You Know: From Greek katarrhein, "to flow down" (kata,"down" + rhein, "to flow"). Pronounced "kuh-TAHR" - unlike Qatar.

What is yerba maté?

Search: yerba mate

Why: We are trying to eat like cavemen, so I've been going to Whole Foods a lot and trying various expensive healthy-looking things. On the back of the Guayaki Yerba Mate $3 organic "Pure Mind" drink thing:

In 1996 after our co-founding Argentine partner passed us our first mate gourd, we immediately felt the balanced, nourishing and unparalleled energy.

In college, I had some Yerba Mate Latte All Night Samba tea that I skulled during all-nighters. I pictured the plant behind it to look like coffee beans, not like a gourd.

Answer: First, the yerba maté plant is a South American evergreen shrub related to holly. The fruit is a red drupe. (Do you know this word? Drupe? More importantly, do you know the word drupelet? Every little bubble on raspberry or blackberry is called a "drupelet." Impress your friends.) The leaves of the plant contain caffeine.

The drink maté (also chimarrão or cimarrón) is just the leaves of the yerba mate plant put inside a hollowed-out calabash gourd. You drink it with a silver straw.

And there are more modern versions that use modern materials. Progressive!

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: Speaking of Whole Foods / eating like cavemen, if you like to make homemade kale chips single every night (and why wouldn't you?), try these awesome things from Kaia.

They are crunchy as all get-out, super tasty, and sickeningly good for you.

How can I make rock candy at home?

Search: make rock candy

Why: I don't know if I've mentioned this (I have), but we've been making our own sweet tea vodka at home because Firefly, while goddamn delicious, is also goddamn $20 a bottle. The only real ingredients are tea, vodka, and simple syrup. A few weeks ago, Chandler made some simple syrup on the stove, and then we abandoned our apartment to dogsit at his sister's house.

We've been back many times, of course - poor Maddie is there all alone. Just last night, I noticed that the simple syrup - still sitting on the stove - had hardened into a thick shell with some liquid underneath. (like this, kind of)

And now I have a hankering for rock candy. (I would eat what's in there, but it has pieces of basil in it from a different experiment, and possibly a few dead flies. Plus it's been sitting there for literally 3 whole weeks.)

Answer: Oh god, it's so easy! There is a nice photo tutorial here, but I will show you how simple it is first. All you need is:

• Water
• Granulated sugar
• Flavoring extract or oil (optional)
• Food coloring (optional)
• Glass jar
• Thread or skewer
  

And here is what you do:

1. Wet the thread or skewer and roll it in the sugar. This will give the sugar crystals something to "grab" when they start forming.

2. Make some simple syrup by dissolving sugar in boiling water.

3. Add coloring & flavors. (Sidenote: We just got a SodaStream - which is awesome - and I wonder if those flavor syrups would work with this. I WONDER.)

4. Fill the jar with the simple syrup.

5. Dangle the thread or skewer inside the surp (tie it to a pencil or pin it) so it hangs about an inch above the bottom of the jar. Don't let it touch the sides.

6. Put in a cool, dark place. Crystals should start to form in 4-6 hours. Allow to grow to the size you want; larger candy can take up to a week.

Or you can just get a kit. It looks like a really good garnish, either way.

Source: Candy.About.com

The More You Know: Wait, is everyone thinking about "hankering" now? What is the origin of the word "hankering"? Me too. To "hanker" means:

c.1600, of unknown origin, probably from Flemish hankeren, related to Du. hunkeren; perhaps an intensive of M.Du. hangen "to hang." If so, the notion is of "lingering about" with longing or craving.

What happens in "The Bell Jar"?

Search: bell jar

Why: In Ryan O'Connell's essay "How to See a Shrink" on Thought Catalog:

Experience a kind of depression you’ve never felt before. Live in the bell jar, cry during commercials in the middle of the afternoon when the sun is still shining and people are outside living their lives. Or just have lots of money and like to talk about yourself. Decide to call a therapist.

I never read that book, and I don't think I want to.

Answer: Oh, it has much more narrative than I suspected. Here is a summary of the summary:

Esther Greenwood, a girl from Boston, gets a summer internship at a magazine in NYC. She is not as excited as she feels like she's supposed to be, just kind of meh about the whole thing. She has a bitchy friend Doreen, and knows a baby-machine idiot named Dodo, but she respects Betsy from Kansas who is always good and nice.

Esther goes to her job and things happen. She has a beau back home who she expects to marry. She thinks a lot about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, those communists who are scheduled for execution. She applies for a writing course by a famous author, but when she goes home, her seaward of a mom tells her she was rejected. She wants to write a novel, but she doesn't think she knows anything. After school, she doesn't want to pop out babies like Dodo or be a stenographer like all the other women of America, and the idea of not being able to do anything else bums her out.

Esther's depression makes her unable to asleep. Her mother sends her to a hot psychiatrist who Ester does not trust. He hastily diagnoses her and has her put in a hospital, where she receives electroconvulsive therapy that's is improperly administered. When she tells her mom she doesn't want to go back, her mom is all, "I knew you'd decide to be all right."



Esther gets more and more blue. She feels like she's trapped under a bell jar, struggling for breath. She half-asses some suicide attempts, and after a particularly elaborate one, she is sent to a different hospital. She is given a lady therapy, Dr. Nolan, who gives her psychotherapy and ECT done the right way.

Esther confides in Dr. Nolan that she envies the freedom men have, and that she worries about getting pregnant. Dr. Nolan hooks her up with a diaphragm, which makes Esther feel less scared about sex and having to marry the wrong man. She improves a lot, and the novel ends with her entering the room for an interview that will decide whether she can leave the hospital.

Esther.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: The real reason I am posting this is because I just read a ton about Sylvia Plath (b. 1932) who kilt herself at age 30. Points of interest:

• Almost all of the major plot points in The Bell Jar really happened to her.
• She married English poet Ted Hughes on 6/16/56.

• They had 2 kids, Frieda (b. 1960) and Nicholas (b. 1962).
• In Aug. 1961, she finished The Bell Jar.
• In July 1962, she discovered her husband having an affair with Assia Wevill, who was renting their flat in London with her [third] husband David. The couple separated.
  
• In Oct. 1962, Plath wrote most of the poems in Ariel (published posthumously).
  
• In Dec. 1962, she rented a flat in William Butler Yeats's old house with her two kids. It was cold and miserable; the kids were sick all the time, and she didn't have a phone.
• In Jan. 1963, The Bell Jar came out, published under the pen name Victoria Lucas, and was met with critical indifference.
• Plath's friend Dr. Horder saw that she was not doing well, and he prescribed her anti-depressants and arranged for her to have a live-in nurse.
• On Feb. 11, 1963, Plath put wet towels under the doors of her children's rooms and stuck her head in the oven. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
• At the time of Plath's suicide, Assia Wevill was pregnant with Hughes's child, but she terminated the pregnancy soon after. She helped Hughes care for Plath's children.
• In March 1965, Wevill gave birth to a daughter nicknamed Shura while still married to David Wevill. Though Hughes never publicly claimed Shura was his daughter, he believed she was his.

• On March 23, 1969, Wevill gassed herself and 4 year-old Shura in their London home using a gas stove. The two were found lying on a mattress.
• In Oct. 1998, Ted Hughes died of a heart attack.
• On March 16, 2009, Nicholas Hughes hanged himself at age 47.

#dark

Plath in photos: Cape Cod 1952, in Paris

Can I read my own palm?

Search: palm reading

Why: On Thought Catalog, "Marriage and Relationships from a 20-Something's Perspective" by Caitlin Stewart Truman:

A palm reader recently informed me that I do not have a union line. However, he also told me that I don’t have a life line. Obviously this means I am a rounded-out loner freak. Take what you will from the mystics, am I right?

Answer: As good as anyone else can! This Read your own PALM! thing looked promising for a few clicks, but then it petered out. They do offer an Online Palm Reading Service, but I don't have a scanner. I am now looking at some of their other resources on the same site.

For starters:

That's all well and good, but I seriously only have exactly 3 lines on my hand. Maybe 4, if you count a wrinkle down near the bottom. Maybe I just moisturize too much?

Uch, hands are so weird.

In good news,

• I will live forever (my Life Line is long and deep [twss])
• and carefully (my Head Line is touching my Life Line)

but also

• without luck (I have no space between my Life and Head Lines)
  
• selfishly / with a broken heart (my Heart Line starts between my 1 & 2 fingers)
• poor (I don't even have a Money Line)
• single and childless (I don't have Marriage or Children Lines, either)
  
• and with lots of complicated health problems (my Health Line is barely visible, at best)
  

It's looking pretty bleak.

But at least my hands are soft!

Source: OFESite

The More You Know: Did you know that the shapes and angles of your fingers and thumbs can tell you things about yourself, too? It's true! For example:

• If your top knuckles are smooth and your middle ones are knotty, then you are a person whose intellect and practicality work well together. A strong instinctive drive is characteristic of well developed knuckles.

WHAT!