Trivia

Q. Do oranges grow wild?

A. Some. In the India foothills of the Himalayas where they started out.

Q. According to the report I’m reading, the average sentence for murder in the United States is 20 years 3 months. What’s the average time served?

A. According to the report I’m reading, 8-years-8-months.

Would you buy a newspaper that devoted its entire front page to advertising? All British newspapers did it a century ago. Most American newspapers, too. The London Times did so until 1966. “Philosophically,” writes a client, “That’s about where television is now. Almost all its front pages are devoted to advertising”

No wild sheep bear wool.

The mother slept with her infant so the baby could nurse at need. That was the seemingly natural practice throughout all those centuries since the human beginning. Still is, in most societies. But in the industrialized world, the mother decided with the father it was biologically normal to put the infant down at night in a crib. One small but elementary piece of the long, long pattern completely changed. Remarkable, what? It happened only about 200 years ago.