Good morning, John, it's Tuesday, some day of some month and I have something I need to get off my chest. There's always been ice on Mars, everybody's known that there's ice on Mars, it's not news that there's ice on Mars! Why is that news? We've known for, like, 50 years that there's ice on Mars!

*sigh* Okay.

[2008 intro]

Sorry. Mars dork. Mars has ice caps. They're sometimes coated with carbon dioxide, like dry ice, but at the core, they're both made of water. I don't know why everyone thought that it was news that there is ice on Mars. The news is that the lander landed on ice. That's great news for the people who wanted to study the ice, but there's always been ice on Mars!

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I asked the Nerdfighters to use their collective brain cells and Googling fingers to answer some questions. And they did a remarkably good job in answering all but one of the questions and the one question that didn't get answered was pretty hard.

I asked what the difference between "mono" and "uni" were and you guys knew that. Apparently, the big difference is that one is Latin and one is Greek and I thought they were both Latin. Latin words use "uni" and Greek words use "mono". Now, there were other people who indicated that "uni" often had a connotation of bringing many into one, whereas "mono" was just one on its own, like "monomer" is one thing all by itself, whereas "university" is many coming into one. But that doesn't work in every circumstance, like "unicycle" still only has one wheel, it's not a "monocycle". But interesting, nonetheless, if, uh, you're interested in that kind of thing.

Continuing, "trivia" comes from "tri via", I was right. "Tri via", "three roads", and any place where three roads come together is often where people get together and talk about...they just gossip. You know, chill out, hang out, talk about stuff that doesn't really matter. Not very important stuff, but, you know, trivia.

Are there more murders on TV or in real life? That one remains pretty much unanswered. The general consensus is that real life probably has more murders, which, you know, not what I would want to hear. Per capita, television definitely has more murders. If you're a character on television, your life span is significantly shorter than a person in real life. Also, if you're at a party and Tony Shalhoub or Angela Lansbury or Hercule Poirot show up, just leave. Leave, leave, run away because either your jewels are gonna get stolen or you are gonna get whacked.

I also asked whether evil people had pets. Lots of evil people have had pets. So, lots of people knew about Hitler. He had a dog named Blondi, a German Shepherd (surprise), that, apparently, went down the same way as he and his girlfriend through poison pill. But, what you may not know, is that Hitler had another dog named Fuchsl. I'm not making it up. So, uh, Hitler was fighting in World War I, he was - he was, uh, working around in the trenches and her found a little terrier named Fuchsl and he adopted it and, later, Fuchsl was stolen from him. And whoever stole Fuchsl may have, in fact, been responsible for Hitler turning out the way he did. Probably not. Nonetheless, it's hard to think that if you had a little terrier named Fuchsl that you could be that much of a jerk. Fuchsl.

Lenin loved cats. He had lots of cats. And while you may not think Lenin is very evil, he did sorta open up the door for Stalin to take over after he died, which - not good.

However, there are some evil people that really, uh, hated pets. For example, Mao, who you might not think is all that evil until I tell you this story, decided that all pets were a symbol of - of bourgeoisie oppression and had them all killed, uh, in the '60s and '70s. He killed tens of thousands of dogs and cats, even dogs and cats that were raised primarily for food. He killed those as well. Not that they would not have died.

So now you know the answers to all those questions. I have a question for you. I'm making a song about Star Trek and it's longer than four minutes and I can't get it any shorter, so I'm going to have to impose the one longer-than-four-minutes clause, and that requires that there be a Nerdfighting montage. So, if you could send me anything to do with Star Trek, anything. Preferably Next Generation and preferably with Captain Picard involved, that would be fantastic, to sparksflyup@gmail.com so that the video can be longer than four minutes. I promise it'll be worth it. I'm very excited about this song.

John, I'll see you soon.

Lenin's kitty says, "Click the little yellow box and subscribe!"