Interesting. I do remember that the dictionary Howard was using was not OED, but one produced by a defunct U.S. company (defunct well before 1988, the year of the dual). No big deal.
When I moved from Illinois to California, I noticed that many of the dandelions here looked different from the ones back home. They were taller, with woody, forked stems, rather than the soft hollow stems I was used to. It was many years before I learned that these are not dandelions, but a plant called catsear (Hypochaeris radicata), sometimes called false dandelion. The flowers look nearly identical to real dandelions, and they mature into fluffy white puffballs like dandelion, but they are a different species and indeed a different genus, although both are in the family Asteraceae.
I never knew what the fake-dandelions were called so thank you for plugging that hole in my knowledge. They tend to produce taller, slightly larger flowers in my experience. And the leaves and stem are quite rough to the touch relative to the dandelion.
But what about the wine? Is dandelion wine only from the original or the false?
You can make wine of dandelions? That’s news to me. I know that their fresh leafs make for a good salad, and I picked them and tasted it, it’s really good, but I never thought of wine.
Has Ray Bradbury died in vain?
Did he write a book called “Dandelion Wine”? Serious question.
ETA: yeah, I googled it, it’s true. Never heard of that book. I still haven’t read any of his books, though a few are on my list.
Which in turn are not the same thing as what I used to call “giant dandelion” before I learned its proper name was Salsify, or Goatsbeard
Dandelions also make a very tasty jelly. I made some last year and sent it out as Christmas gifts. It tastes like honey and is great on a bagel or English muffin. You can also use it to flavor hot tea. Here’s a recipe.
Those look almost like what I call the evil dandelion. However, the seed heads don’t puff into a full sphere, and the whole plant is covered in prickles. Have to wear gloves if you’re going to pull them
It is apparently quasi-autobiographical, describing his (or someone’s) childhood in the early twentieth century. Do not expect ravenous space monsters or witchcraft or weirdness, just a pleasant little dive into the past.
And that thread led me to find out about the Pittsburgh rare steak:
Sounds like a Pittsburgh rare steak. Steel workers used to just toss a raw steak on the insanely hot steel for a few seconds on each side. Charred outside, raw inside. You can still order it in restaurants there.
Never mind. It was elderberry wine in Arsenic and Old Lace.
It’s common knowledge that objects get hot when moving through air at a high speed, e.g. supersonic aircraft or a meteoroid. “Friction with the air” is the reason that’s usually given, but I just learned that this isn’t true: the heating is primarily due to air being rapidly compressed by the object.
When you compress a fluid, you are doing work on it, and the fluid heats up as a result. This happens inside the cylinder of an internal combustion engine. It also happens when objects move through air at a very high speed.
When I cooked for a living, one of the orders that made freaked me out was for our large filet mignon, butterflied, cooked Pittsburgh rare. It looked pitiful on the plate, but some people liked it.
As an Americana music nerd, this blew my mind when I saw it on reddit yesterday.
The time between Beethoven’s death and the dawn of jazz/ragtime is only around 70 years which is about 30 years less than now and the dawn of jazz.
Now check this out: The second movement of Sonata #2 in C minor written by Beethoven in 1823. It sounds just like ragtime/boogie woogie.
Or about the same as now and the dawn of Rock n Roll.
I once had a similar kind of thing in an Italian restaurant in Portland Oregon. It looked like a normal steak on the outside but was purple inside, almost gelatinous. It took a few bites for me to develop an appreciation. They called it “Tagliata”.
So this was closer to reality that fiction 
:
Lots of interesting random facts in this article which I (metaphorically) stumbled across. My favorites were the truss arm poles and Mercury vapor lamp; some of the LED ones also have a pleasing that-looks-like-a-spaceship appeal to them.