Fruits and Vegetables

You may be privy to recent internet outrage over Congress declaring pizza a vegetable. In reality, Congress blocked a US Department of Agriculture proposal to increase the amount of tomato paste necessary to qualify as a school-lunch vegetable – for the past 20 years, two tablespoons has been sufficient.

Yet, to some, the true display of ignorance is calling tomato a vegetable, for – as even the most casual one-upper knows – they are really fruits. Which brings us to today’s post.

Happy Thanksgiving, America (and to a lesser extent, The Netherlands)! And if you happen to live in Canada, Liberia, Japan, or Grenada, happy belated Thanksgiving! 

But not you Norfolk Island... You wait your turn.

Source: 1, 2, 3

Zombies

What better way to mark learnalittle’s return from the dead than a short history of zombies?

Tales of the living dead abound in cultures across the world. The Norse draugar are the bodies of slain Vikings, said to inhabit their graves and jealously guard the treasures buried with their former selves. In Chinese folklore, jiang shi are reanimated corpses that hop around with their arms outstretched, sucking the life-force qi out of the living. And according to Medieval British accounts, deceased ne’er-do-wells may return as revenants – risen bodies bloated with blood – to terrorize their families and neighbors.