Dr Stu (via email): “Today is officially Epiphany“
More importantly, it is the last day of Woolies:
Clifton, Nottingham, earlier today:
Something that Dr Stu failed to mention in his exposé of fruit labels….
The poor, exploited chinchillas, working for a pittance in Chinese sweatshops, forced to stick the little labels on with their little paws.
Dr Stu watched Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer on my recommendation.
My review: “Good, worth a watch. 7/10″
Dr Stu’s review: “The worst film I’ve EVER seen. You clearly know nothing about cinema.”
While enjoying this long, hot, sunny summer - I overheard my neighbour discussing with his wife the best way to kill slugs. Upon hearing his wife ask, “But why does salt kill slugs?” - I instantly sprang into action.
“Dear neighbour”, I replied, “the answer is quite obvious - it is due to a simple biological phenomenon – osmosis! The process of ‘osmosis’ is the passage of water from a region of high water concentration through a semi-permeable membrane to a region of low water concentration. Upon putting salt onto the slug, the process of osmosis is triggered, resulting in the rapid depreciation of the slug’s life expectancy - to a couple of seconds.
The reason is that slugs (and snails for that matter) have a higher percentage of their bodyweight made up of water than other animals. Also, their skin is much more permeable than other animals. Upon the application of salt to the unfortunate (or deserving) slug 
(who belong to the animal classification ‘Phylum Mollusca’, commonly called molluscs; class ‘Gastropoda’) this decreases the water concentration outside the slug/snail.
As osmosis is the aforementioned process of the movement of water from an area of high water concentration through a semi-permeable membrane to an area of lower water concentration - the water inside the slug moves outside the slug, in order to reach an equilibrium concentration on both sides of the skin. Why is osmosis triggered? It is because salt is a desiccant, it removes water from things.
Unfortunately, this means that the slug is now much drier then it can tolerate. It literally dies of dehydration. The thick goo you see on the slug after salt is put on the body is actually the fluid or blood of a slug that rushes to the skin’s surface to dilute the salt.”
My neighbour’s wife thanked me and they both hurried indoors. I haven’t seen them since……
After the old woman had gradually regained regained consciousness, she told me that she had gone off the idea of fruit salad and would just make do with a light snack - perhaps a bag of mixed nuts.
“Old lady,” I said, “I imagine you are probably referring to hazlenuts, unless what you are really after are seeds, legumes or drupes rather than nuts.”
When she said that what she really wanted were some nuts such as peanuts and cashew nuts, I really has to put her straight on a few things…
Nut in botany is a simple dry fruit with one seed (rarely two) in which the ovary wall becomes very hard (stony or woody) at maturity, and where the seed remains unattached or unfused with the ovary wall. Most nuts come from pistils with inferior ovaries (without functional anthers and pistils) and all are indehiscent (not opening at maturity). True nuts are produced - for example - by some plants-families of the order Fagales. 
Note that not all true nuts are edible; some (e.g. birch, alder, hornbeam, wingnut) are too small to be worth eating. Others, like the tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflorus), are bitter due to tannins and require extensive leaching before they are edible.
A nut in cuisine is a much less restrictive category than a nut in botany, the term being (mis)applied to many seeds that are not true nuts. Any large, oily kernel found within a shell and used in food may be regarded as a nut. Because nuts generally have a high oil content, they are a highly prized food and energy source. A large number of seeds are edible by humans and used in cooking, eaten raw, sprouted, or roasted as a snack food, or pressed for oil that is used in cookery and cosmetics. By the same token, nuts (or seeds generally) are a significant source of nutrition for wildlife. This is particularly true in temperate climates where animals such as jays and squirrels store acorns and other nuts during the autumn to keep them from starving during the winter and early spring.
Some fruits and seeds are nuts in the culinary sense but not in the botanical sense:
- Almond is the edible seed of a drupe - the leathery “flesh” is removed at harvest.
- Brazil nut is the seed from a capsule.
- Candlenut (used for oil) is a seed.
- Cashew nut is a seed.
- Coconut is a dry, fibrous drupe.
- Horse-chestnut is an inedible capsule.
- Macadamia nut is a creamy white kernel (Macadamia integrifolia).
- Peanut is a legume and a seed.
- Pine nut is the seed of several species of pine (coniferous trees).
- Pistachio nut is the seed of a thin-shelled drupe.
Nuts versus seeds
As mentioned previously, the term nut is sometimes used on seeds, but nuts and seeds are not the same thing. A nut is a seed, but not all seeds are nuts. A seed comes from fruit and can be removed from the fruit. A nut is a compound ovary that is both the seed and the fruit, which cannot be separated.
Besides seeds, others that are mislabelled as nuts include legume (separate hard seeds), drupe (contains endocarp which contains seeds) and capsule (dried fruit that splits to release seeds).
After learning the true defination of nuts, she let out an audible scream and the security guards asked that I never come back……….
A member of the public recently approached me in a supermarket. She said, “Dr. Stu of Random and Uninteresting Facts fame - could you tell me what these numbered stickers on my fruit relate to?”
I was, of course, only too happy to help.
Old Lady, I replied, “The mysterious numbered stickers relate to a ‘PLU’ which is the abbreviation of ‘Price Look Up’. By reading the PLU code, you can tell if the fruit was genetically modified, organically grown or produced with chemical fertilizers, fungicides, or herbicides.
They are relatively easy codes to read:
- For conventionally grown fruit, (grown with chemical inputs), the PLU code on the sticker consists of four numbers.
- Organically grown fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 9.
- Genetically engineered (GM) fruit has a five-numeral PLU prefaced by the number 8.
For example:
- A conventionally grown banana would be 4011
- An organic banana would be: 94011
- A genetically engineered (GE or GMO) banana would be: 84011
However, make the most of these good times, as it seems that the PLU codes are destined to disappear in 5 to 10 years time, as they are likely to be substituted by another and more efficient code - the RSS 14 (A sort of mini bar code).”
I then gave her a useful handout on the most commonly used PLU codes (attached) before her eyes glazed over and she collapsed.
A common question often asked of me is, “Are Rabbits Rodents?”
Well, of course they are not, I reply. Rabbits aren’t rodents (like rats or mice) - they are, in fact, lagomorphs.
Incidentally, rabbits are more closely related to horses than they are to mice. Rabbits and horses share similarities in their diet and in their method of digesting food.
Many people are often confused as to the protocol for addressing chickens.
To help you avoid a social faux-pas, I am happy to advise that you may call a chicken a ‘chicken’ regardless of its age or sex - but you should be aware of the specific names as well. 
Before she lays her first egg a female chicken is called a ‘pullet’; after that she becomes a ‘hen’. A young male chicken is called a ‘cockerel’; when fully grown he is known as a ‘cock’.
I trust this helps!
Introducing Dr Stu’s Random and Uninteresting Facts - pointless trivia and arbitrary info from someone who’s clearly not got enough work to do, and has just discovered Wikipedia.
Dr Stu’s first factoid is about Tipp-Ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipp-Ex.
Did you know that in Sweden it is sometimes used to mix a drink called “White Christmas”, together with Vodka?
Fact.
