cats and other catastrophes

• Wikipedia citationlessly states that the terminal velocity of a cat is 60 mph, not my stated 30. For reference, rain drop can travel as fast as 20 or 30 miles per hour.
• The article I remember reading was undoubtedly this article from the Straight Dope. However, slightly more recent research has indicated that the 'cats do better after 7 [(I said 4)] stories' theory is based on a sampling bias: people don't bring dead cats to the vet.

• Bertha's Mussels is in Fell's Point.
• I couldn't find a flag that matched that hat. The closest is probably Macedonia, followed by Arizona.
• There are five ferries in the Cape May/Lewes ferry fleet.
• Yucca and yuca are very much not the same plant.

more corrections

• Yggdrasil is the world tree from Norse mythology.
• UVA was notable at its founding for being not affiliated with a religious movement. However, a chapel was built on the grounds in 1890. The closest reference I could find was to Noble C. Powell, an Episcopal bishop who preached in Charlottesville for several years in the early part of the last century.

corrections

• As far as I can tell, the Great Red Spot has existed for as long as astronomers have been looking, but its color changes slightly from time to time.
• It was Hilary Clinton, not Bill, who (apocryphally?) overdosed on fondue. 
• The restaurant I was thinking of is called Helmand, not the Khyber Pass.
• The suicide rate in Alaska (and, for that matter, a variety of states that I would group together as 'lonely') have rates of suicide about the same as northern-European countries. However, suicide if often under-reported, or just generally mis-reported, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions about the 'livability' of these regions; it is not without the realm of possibility that a large part of the change could be due to Scandanavians keep better statistics, or that Alaska just had an unlucky couple of years.

How to decide where to eat.

 Per Steve's advice, I have made a flow chart version of the previous post. The biggest hassle is keeping the three lists.

various

• Cisco owns Linksys, not D-Link.
• While the yellow (amber) light wasn't deployed until 1920 for auto traffic, about 50 years after the first traffic light appeared, it was in common usage on the crowded northeast rail lines for at least 20 years before that.
• NavyFCU did indeed have a loss last quarter, somewhat due to a 'stabilization' expense by NCUA, the FDIC equivalent for credit unions.
• Chickens don't require roosters to lay eggs, just to fertilize them.

How to Decide Where to Eat

First, keep three lists. Where you like to eat, where you've been meaning to eat, and where you've eaten recently. Then, based on your mood, pick either a comfort food from the list of favorites or a new place to suit a spirit of adventure. (Switch back and forth between the two lists, if you like.) Then, look at where you've eaten recently. If you are going for an old favorite, go to the one you haven't been to recently. If you are looking for a new place, go to one that fits in your budget. One exception: if you are in the mood for a specific kind of food, go eat that.
Any other advice?

some corrections

• The vocoder and auto-tune are different devices.
• In nuclear fusion, atoms smash together to combine, e.g. two hydrogens combining to produce helium and a spare neutron. However, wikipedia thinks hydrogen bombs use a different fusion fuel than liquid hydrogen (a mix of H-2 and H-3), since that is a hassle to work with.
• Neutrons can break down into an electron, a proton and an antineutrino via 'beta decay.'
• Alpha particles are helium nuclei. Proton emission is much more rare.
• People lose considerable mass through perspiration. I assume that is much more true for elephants.

geographic and historical errors

• The Marianas Trench is near the Mariana Islands, not in the Phillipines.
• The NGA west gallery was completed in 1941, about 50 years after I said.
• The train station where the NGA is was a B&P station, which would be removed when Union station was built (being the union of the B&P and Pennsylvania railroads, among others).
• The 99-cent thing may have been caused by newspapermen, but probably not. If it was, it happened in Chicago, not New York, and with Stone, not related to the Pulitzer/Hearst thing.
• I haven't been able to find any info about pricing gas to the tenth of a cent, except that it would have made sense a long time ago, when a cent was worth something and you would have needed a lot of gas to get anywhere.

calvert county population

The population of Calvert County was about 20,000 in 1970, not 5,000.