Dave, Jeremy and I were talking over tour-the-world flights of beers at Baily's on Thursday. As I'm prone to do when I'm drinking, I made up facts that turned out not to be true. Here's the retractions:

• Ohio State is the largest university in the nation, but it doesn't have 93,000 students. It has 51,818 students as of 2006, putting it just ahead of Arizona State University and University of Florida (Go Gators!) with 51,234 and 50,785 students, respectively (reference from good ol' wikipedia). Also to correct our discussion, UT and Texas A&M are both very large universities (ranked 5th and 7th respectively). UT is located in Austin, and A&M is in College Station, situated in the center of the triangle created by Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, but not particularly close to any of them. We had also pondered what exactly a buckeye was, and (once again thanks to wikipedia) it is a medium-sized deciduous tree which produces a fruit containing one to three nuts. The nuts contain tannic acid, making them inedible to humans, horses, and cattle, but native americans did blanch them making them safe for consumption. 'Buckeye' was a term of endearment for Ohio pioneers, and is the state tree of Ohio, hence its use as a mascot for OSU.
• Chancellorsville was a battle in the civil war in which the Confederate army under Lee won a stunning victory. The notorious Confederate prison camp I was thinking of was Andersonville prison, which was actually known in the south as Camp Sumter (it is in Sumter County, GA). Almost 30% (13,000 of 45,000) prisoners held there died during its 15 months of operation.
• I somehow invented the story that Hitler tried to get into a prestigious art school by drawing a perfect circle freehand, but botched it and wasn't admitted. It's true that he was an artist for a time, and that he was rejected from art school. I haven't found any mention anywhere, though, of him trying to draw a perfect circle. The two stories I did come across were:
  1. Various stories of Michelangelo drawing a perfect freehand circle, none of which seem to have much proof, and
  2. Giotto di Bondone submitted a perfectly-drawn freehand circle as proof of his ability to Pope Benedictus XII, securing a commission for artistic work in the Vatican. This seems true.

And some additions to our discussion of nerve-electronic interfaces:

• They are often called brain-computer interfaces
• They have shown success with non-invasive sensors on a cap
• Cursor control is the most common test
• Lots of studies exist with monkeys and joysticks. The procecure is usually:
  1. Monkey is trained to use joystick and robotic arm to get food
  2. Neurons which fire in moving robotic arm are recorded
  3. Neuron connections are used to control robotic arm, joystick is disabled (even though monkey continues to move the disabled joystick)
  4. Joystick is removed, monkey learns that just moving its arm will move the robotic arm
  5. Eventually the monkey learns it does not even have to move its physical arm, it uses thoughts solely to move robotic arm