The How Utterly Random Thread

[Si Hunt]

YET ANOTHER ONE: Do

Si.

[Stuart Wallis]

Must I? I've been doing it for three years solid, five years not solid at all, and seven years somewhere in-between!

[shada pavlova]

...and we pray that you won't elaborate.

What I meant by "Don't watch The Romans" is that the video is such low quality, it's nearly unwatchable.

[Dirk Gently]

...so then I said, "So that's why they're called brownies!"

[Pip Madeley]

...and we pray that you won't elaborate.

What I meant by "Don't watch The Romans" is that the video is such low quality, it's nearly unwatchable.

It's no worse than any other 60s serial?

[Antony Cox]

Give Desperate Housewives a chance, Pip - it's very good!

[SiHart]

What'll I do now I've finished off series 4?

Si xx

[Pip Madeley]

What'll I do when you are far away and I am blue?

[shada pavlova]

Paint yourself green instead of blue.

[Dave Tudor]

Is rhubarb a fruit or a vegetable?

[Dirk Gently]

Is rhubarb a fruit or a vegetable?

Kingdom: Plantae

Division: Magnoliophyta

Class: Magnoliopsida

Order: Caryophyllales

Family: Polygonaceae

Genus: Rheum

Commonly known as a vegetable.

[Pip Madeley]

Tim's wrong, it's a dog:

[Si Hunt]

Rhubarb is surely a fruit. Apple Crumble, Plum Crumble, Rhubarb Crumble.

Si.

[Dirk Gently]

Fruits grow on bushes & trees where as Rhubarb is the stalk of a leaf.

[Pip Madeley]

I prefer a fruity bush to a stalk.

[Antony Cox]

Each to their own!

I've just realised that Alex's photo on the cover of The Paradise Machine makes him look like a nightclub bouncer you really wouldn't want to argue with...

[SiHart]

Rhubarb is surely a fruit. Apple Crumble, Plum Crumble, Rhubarb Crumble

Good theory, alas it falls down as you don't get a Tomato Crumble.

Si xx

[Antony Cox]

Ooh, I love a good tomato crumble!

Perhaps we should ask Lorraine Bowen? She seems to at least be an expert on crumble...

[Stuart Wallis]

I've been crumbling for years, that's why SP has no need to worry about my elaborating - in my condition...

[Simon R]

My favourite Sugababes single is "Girls".

[Si Hunt]

Good theory, alas it falls down as you don't get a Tomato Crumble.

That's because a tomato is a vegetable! Because you have it with salad.

Si.

[shada pavlova]

In that sense, so is bacon.

[Si Hunt]

Well no, the bacon isn't part of the salad or else we'd be arguing that keisch, nachos and pies are vegetables too. But as part of the salad, you only properly have vegetables, not fruits. Savvy?

Si.

[SiHart]

That may well be true, but the tomato is still classfied as a fruit as it contains seeds.

Si xx

[SiHart]

Here's Wiki:

Botanically, a tomato is the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant: therefore it is a fruit or, more precisely, a berry. However, the tomato is not as sweet as those foodstuffs usually called fruits and, from a culinary standpoint, it is typically served as part of a salad or main course of a meal, as are vegetables, rather than at dessert in the case of most fruits. As noted above, the term "vegetable" has no botanical meaning and is purely a culinary term.

This argument has had legal implications in the United States. In 1887, U.S. tariff laws that imposed a duty on vegetables but not on fruits caused the tomato's status to become a matter of legal importance. The U.S. Supreme Court settled the controversy in 1893 by declaring that the tomato is a vegetable, based on the popular definition that classifies vegetables by use, that they are generally served with dinner and not dessert (Nix v. Hedden (149 U.S. 304)).[14] The holding of the case applies only to the interpretation of the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883, and the court did not purport to reclassify the tomato for botanical or other purposes other than paying a tax under a tariff act.

The vegetable has been designated the state vegetable of New Jersey. Arkansas took both sides by declaring the "South Arkansas Vine Ripe Pink Tomato" to be both the state fruit and the state vegetable in the same law, citing both its culinary and botanical classifications. In 2006, the Ohio House of Representatives passed a law that would have declared the tomato to be the official state fruit, but the bill died when the Ohio Senate failed to act on it. Tomato juice has been the official beverage of Ohio since 1965. A.W. Livingston, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio played a large part in popularizing the tomato in the late 1800s.

Due to the scientific definition of a fruit, the tomato remains a fruit when not dealing with US tariffs. Nor is it the only culinary vegetable that is a botanical fruit: eggplants, cucumbers, and squashes of all kinds (such as zucchini and pumpkins) share the same ambiguity

Si xx