TIL...

[Ghost07]

He told me that cat food contains a substance toxic to dogs, and told me to feed the cat someplace where the dog could not reach her food. He actually made me feel like I was killing my dog. He also said the opposite was true, but the cat never did like dog food.

[cooleddie74]

Ugh. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll do some research.

[Gary7]

TIL... that my neighbors turned in their temporarily adopted cat to a PetSmart adoption drive. They were trying to get me to take it. The cat was semi-feral but my neighbors befriended him (they have two other cats). He gradually returned to a normal domesticated disposition and warmed up to me when I'd come over to their property. It was amazing how his matted fur changed to a very pet-able "fluff" after being fed good food for a while. But he's very much an outdoor cat and I live in an apartment that doesn't have easy access to the outside for a cat. I just wasn't read to adopt a pet right now... but my neighbors (who are friends of mine) kept trying to convince me. Got an SMS photo today of the cat in a PetSmart cage. Yeah, I felt bad for him... and a little guilty that I didn't take him.

[auntiehill]

^Well, his odds of going to a good home now are pretty good.

[M'Sharak]

TIL that you can have an earthquake with negative magnitude. I couldn't recall ever having seen mention of one before, but apparently they're recorded quite frequently with modern seismographic instruments.

Sez Wiki:

His motivation for creating the local magnitude scale was to compare the size of different earthquakes.[1] Richter, who since childhood had aspirations in astronomy, drew inspiration from the apparent magnitude scale used to account for the brightness of stars lost due to distance.[2] Richter arbitrarily chose a magnitude 0 event to be an earthquake that would show a maximum combined horizontal displacement of 1 µm (0.00004 in) on a seismogram recorded using a Wood-Anderson torsion seismograph 100 km (62 mi) from the earthquake epicenter. This choice was intended to prevent negative magnitudes from being assigned. The smallest earthquakes that could be recorded and located at the time [1935] were around magnitude 3. However, the Richter scale has no lower limit, and sensitive modern seismographs now routinely record quakes with negative magnitudes.

Once I saw it explained, it made perfect sense, but it hadn't occurred to me before that there would be earthquakes of magnitude less-than-zero.

[Sector 7]

B.J. wrote:

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TIL... that Liberace played one of Batman's many villains in the 1960s series. I've watched many episodes of that show, but apparently that one escaped me. I wouldn't have known if they hadn't mentioned it on the radio this morning.

Liberace actually played TWO roles: the villain and his victim. Liberace's acting wasn't bad... I've seen worse from supposedly better actors on Batman.

Now that I'm older, I am fascinated by the number of famous actors who played villains on Batman. Not just anyone... A-Listers of that era were on that show: Vincent Price, Roddy McDowall, Eartha Kitt, Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero and many more.

[cooleddie74]

Don't forget Milton Berle as the gangster Louie the Lilac, one of the more entertaining villains of the series. Berle nailed the role of Louie with a love that the actors on the set would remember years later. They said that Milton loved to come to the set and ham it up, enjoying his participation in the series and wondering if the writers would have him back.