Trivia

[Stoday]

Just looked up beaver info on the web. They only work at night! That's my guess gone for a burton...

[kitkatz]

400 trees a year is accurate guess.  You are up!

[Stoday]

Here is a table of life expectancy by age for the USA from 1850 to 2004.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

For example in 1850 a male who survived childhood to 20 could expect die when he reached 60.1

Similarly, in 2004, a 20 year old male could expect to live to 76.7, 16.6 years longer than his ancestor born in 1830.

To which group of people was this improvement of life expectancy attributed?

[cariad]

If I understand the question, I would guess it is mostly down to improved infant mortality rate. Not sure if the infants deserve the credit for this, but I'll guess infants.

[YLGuy]

The question is worded in a little bit confusing manner.  I would have to say scientists who worked on vaccinations.

[kristina]

The question is worded a little bit confusing,
therefore I go for the obvious (which might be wrong all along) :

Healthy, slim, non-smoking, non-drinking young people (students?)
with no genetically inherited diseases/disorders.....?

[Stoday]

Oh dear! I see the ambiguity now. Sorry about that. I'll try a rephrase:

Which group's work enabled later generations to live longer?

Sorry YLGuy - there was something better than developments in vaccinations

[galvo]

How about the pesticides manufacturers?

[YLGuy]

Pharmaceutical companies (antibiotics)?

[cariad]

Damn, I really thought I had it with the infants.... 

Louis Pasteur and his magical Pasteurization? (microbiologists?)

Or, that guy who discovered that hand washing could prevent death in obstetrics wards....? (OK, I admit it. I'm going to have to google for his name) Ignaz Semmelweis, who I guess was a predecessor to Pasteur.

[kristina]

Just as an aside, it was the scientists in Oxford/England,
(no one knows their names) who identified and discovered
the “bugs” and isolated the treatment we now call “Penicillin”.

All Fleming did was notice an oddity about some matter
which was lying around and he sent it to Oxford to find out
what was going on and he got all the credit
and the poor scientists in Oxford got nothing...
This is not common knowledge, one has to “dig around” to find it.

Stoday, as an answer to your question,
the first thing I can think of is improvement
to protect the water-supply from contamination
and protect the sewerage-waste from contaminating the water?

Another answer could be the scientific discovery of the treatment of small-pox by Jenner?

(It was a milk-maid who Jenner met who said her medical problem (later called small-pox)
had disappeared and Jenner realized it had something to do with her job and the cattle
and he went on to isolate an antidote for small pox and tried to get it publicized in London
but the doctors ridiculed his ideas and Jenner returned to the country-side a broken person.

And then later the London medical fraternity made substantial profit from Jenner’s ideas.

[Stoday]

Congratulations Kristina! Over to you.

Yes, it was engineers, who improved hygiene both in the provision of clean water and the disposal of contaminated water. Those measures prevented more deaths in the working population than all the efforts of doctors. I say working population because I think that recent medical developments have significantly reduced the mortality of old wrinklies and crumblies like me.

[kristina]

Thanks, Stoday, here is my question:

Before & during WWII, both in America & in the British Isles (substantially in the British Isles),
there was a “scrap-iron-campaign” which involved sacrificing huge quantities of Victorian iron-railings & iron-gates,
& many iron domestic objects like decorative stoves & door-stops etc., for the war-effort.
After the war rumour spread that the iron was the wrong type & therefore was never used
& all the beautiful iron-work was taken away for no valid reason. Is it true or false that it was the wrong iron?

[YLGuy]

Guess: True because wrought iron is too Malleable because of its composition.

[Stoday]

False because the railings were steel, with less dissolved carbon than cast iron. Cast iron is made from pig iron (from a blast furnace) with scrap iron and steel. If you need steel, it can be made from pig iron by blowing air through the molten iron which burns off the excess carbon and other impurities such as silicon and manganese.

If I remember, there was a collection of aluminum kitchen pans organised by Lord Beaverbrook that turned out to be useless because the metal was unsuitable for making aircraft parts.

[kristina]

Sorry YLGuy, this is not the right answer.

Yes, Stoday, you are right. The iron-railings and gates, and all other scrap-iron, as it is generally termed, is re-usable, whether it is re-smelted or re-forged.
Wrought Iron, Cast Iron and all grades of steel can be re-used ad infinitum. In fact scrap-iron is an extremely important ingredient in the iron-making-process,
and has been so for over 100 years. Prior to and during WWII many countries were desperately trying to buy as much scrap-iron as they could “by hook or by crook”.

The man with his horse and cart going from house to house collecting unwanted scrap-iron is an image which actually camouflages an industry which is, and has been, for over a hundred years, a highly sophisticated business. The dealers in scrap-iron are highly paid and they can move scrap-iron anywhere in the world, often re-directing it en route. The image of a decorative iron-gate being thrown into a furnace is quite ridiculous. When the iron arrives at a steel-works it has been broken-up into specific types of iron or it has been crushed beyond recognition. It does not get dumped into the sea, unless it is for strategic purposes. So it is false to believe that they could not use the scrap-iron because it was the wrong iron.

Over to you Stoday.

[Stoday]

Thanks, Kristina.

Most of the food eaten and drunk by Homo Sapiens is fresh and wholesome. But some is intentionally rotten. Cheese, for example, is best matured until mould forms outside and inside the cheese. Beef from a butcher is (outside the US) hung for a month before it is considered rotted enough by the enzymes in the flesh. (I exclude the US because when I holidayed there the only good steak I got was on a trip to Mexico. The US steaks were too fresh for me). Some of the best and most expensive wine is produced from grapes that are individually selected: only the mouldy grapes are used in the wine, the good ones are rejected (Chateau d'Yquem).

Cows can develop a taste for rotten food too. A young cow won't like it initially, but soon gets the taste for it. Good farmers make rotted food for their cattle. What's it called?

[cariad]

Gwyn, the Welsh country boy, without missing a beat responded: silage.

[Stoday]

Spot on!

Your turn Cariad.

[cariad]

Here's a fun one from NPR's Car Talk. If you've already heard this one, please give others a little time to think it over before responding. If you're just one of those show-offy clever sorts and think of the answer right away, then go ahead and post.

There is a five letter English word with an interesting quality: you can remove either just the first or just the second letter and get two different 4-letter words that are perfect homophones (have the exact same pronunciation) of the original word. All three words are legitimate English words with 3 different meanings.

What is the five-letter word?

[ChickenLittle56]

Is that Scent-cent-sent?

[cariad]

Indeed it is!

You're up, CL!

[ChickenLittle56]

Anyone want to go at bat for me?

[galvo]

No. You have a go!

[ChickenLittle56]

Who was called Minnesota Fats and where was he from in real life. For an extra point what one unique state he has never played in.