Geography

The Pentagon – world’s largest office building

Yesterday evening’s shooting at the Pentagon is sure to keep the famous building in the news.  If you haven’t read about the shooting, you can find that story here.
While talking about it tonight, it would help to know some facts about the Pentagon other than its obvious shape.  Not obvious from the many overhead shots [...]


Brief date night primers – Georgia, Nordic combined

If you’re going to find yourself out to dinner tonight in celebration of Valentine’s Day, your date is likely to bring up the tragic death of the luger from Georgia.  You should know that Georgia is a country south of Russia and north of Turkey. 4.3 million people live in the country which the United [...]


Olympics – Where is Vancouver?

The Winter Olympics begin this evening in Vancouver, Canada, and Dinner Topics will likely provide a few Olympic-related posts over the next two weeks.  Like it or not, people talk about the Olympics, so we’ll make sure we’ve got you covered.  Today we start with the basics.  Everyone knows Vancouver is in Canada, but where [...]


Richter Scale

With the earthquake in Haiti still fresh in everyone’s mind, it’s likely that even you may have uttered a Richter scale reading in the past day (I believe the last I heard for Haiti was 7.0).  Sure, you know that the larger the number, the stronger the earthquake, but here are a few additional facts [...]


Earthquake in Haiti

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday – I think I was hung over from celebrating a binary palindrome day on Monday.  Back to your regularly scheduled Dinner Topic.
The most important story hitting the wires right now is the tragic earthquake in Haiti.  The massive quake has already crumbled buildings, destroyed a hospital, damaged [...]


Gitmo to Thomson??

The story is about a week old, but there’s a good chance if you live in the Midwest, people will still be talking about this topic at your next get together – the prisoners from Gitmo are scheduled to be transported to the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois.  President Obama’s plan is to close the [...]


Copenhagen and the climate conference

A United Nations conference on the climate and global warming will begin tomorrow in Copenhagen, Denmark.  While that may not seem like a riot-inducing topic, apparently it’s a huge sticking point for many groups planning both peaceful and not-so-peaceful demonstrations.  It’s assumed to be so bad that Copenhagen has amped up its police force to [...]


Shooting at Fort Hood

 

Hasan

The big news to know about today is the shooting rampage which occurred at a military base in Texas yesterday.  According to various reports, it is suspected (but not yet confirmed as of this posting) that Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on the military base and, as a result, 12 soldiers and one civilian are [...]