IAQ
Infrequently-asked questions: a collection of things that you probably don’t need to know.
Do turtles hibernate?
No, they brumate, which means “to be in a lethargic state.”
Tell me about the origins of paper.
“In the 1300s parchment — animal skin — was the most common book material in Europe. Producing a large volume, such as the Bible, could require skins of up to 200 goats or sheep. So, the book production really depended on the meat-eating habits of the local populations, which meant that there was a lack of parchment whenever people ate less meat (during Lent, for example). The two other insights are related to the spread of paper. In Europe, paper was most commonly made of cotton rags which meant that the availability of material, again, was sometimes an issue (fast fashion was not there yet!). However, 2 factors contributed to the availability of rags in the 1300s-1400s: increasing urbanisation and the Black Death. Urbanisation meant that people moving into cities abandoned their habits of wearing nothing under their trousers (a thing common in villages of that time) and started using underwear that then provided a ready source of rags for paper. And the Black Death… well, it wiped out a large part of Europe’s population meaning that a huge surplus of clothes of the dead was turned into paper.”(source lost)
Was your dad on Jeopardy?
Did you perform in the Super Bowl halftime show?
