Hot Diggety Dang.

The world can officially come to an end now.

Why? Because I knew an obscure factoid that Jeff . . . didn't.

You see, Jeff's brain is one of the world's greatest repositories of obscure (and useless) factoids, most of which nobody else seems to know.

Today, at coffee, I happened to mention that the reason why the unrelated species of giant panda and red panda both have 'panda' in their name is because 'panda' means 'bamboo eater.'

I did not know that, said Jeff.

Also in the course of conversation, he mentioned that giant pandas are anomalous in that they have the digestive tract of a carnivore, but they are vegetarians.

I knew that. But neither of us knew why such an adaptation has taken place in the species. Perhaps no one knows.

And all of this and 50 cents will get you tomorrow's newspaper.