in other news

Brief round-up of some other random nonsense harvested from the most inaccessible, fluff-filled nooks and crannies of the internet:

• In English, ignoring spaces, the longest palindrome in Morse code is INTRANSIGENCE (.. -. - .-. .- -. ... .. --. . -. -.-. .)
• Pierre, South Dakota is the only US state capital that does not share at least one letter with its parent state.

Those two were both from this interesting wordy trivia site. Other sites of interest include Dan's How To Spot A Psychopath site, which features all manner of geeky marvels. Nice to see someone else shares my enthusiasm for Tim Kreider's cartoons, as well.

Footnote to my Kurt Vonnegut book review - for many years the film rights to The Sirens Of Titan were owned by the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, as discussed in this interview.

Finally two bits of cricketing trivia - both slightly spooky coincidences:

• Legendary Australian batsman and captain Ian Chappell made the 1000th Test century against West Indies in 1968-69. He was eventually out for 165 - the exact same score Charles Bannerman made while compiling the first Test century, in the very first Test of all, 92 years earlier.
• To commemorate the centenary of that first Test match, a Centenary Test was arranged in 1976-77. The result - Australia won by 45 runs: the exact same result as the first Test a century before. Cue spooky Twilight Zone music.....