I found the real cause of those little black dots!
 

You guys know about those little black dots you get on your paint..

anyway, i was sitting in my class Magical Mushrooms and Mischievous Molds (yes that is actually a class), and my professor brought up this topic of those black dots. they are actually called Sphaerobolus Stellatus or "the artillery fungus" they form on mulch and when they get wet, it causes a reaction of the fungus to shoot this little black substance out..as far as 18 FEET IN DISTANCE!. Some people say it is the only thing in nature that can stick two pieces of teflon together.

I'm planning on writing a term paper on these things, i'll share it in april when its due..

anyway, i thought i'd share this interesting find..

heres some more information: Sphaerobolus stellatus, the cannonball fungus, Tom Volk's Fungus of the Month for June 2005

Mods, maybe this should go in lounge?

Nice, I have spent hours trying to get those things off of my cars over the years!

Wow, I never thought of that being the culprit - I always wondered how I was getting road tar thrown up on the very back of the vehicle near the rear window...

Hey Naz, what are you majoring in with taking a mycology class??

Damn interesting art., Naz!

I'm thinking it could also be wooly adelgid poop, other insect poop, in addition
to the cannonball fungus; my wife's pos CR-V is parked outside 24/7, wherever
it is, and often under hemlocks at our house or, at the ball chasing track.
The black dots, regardless of origin, are a bitch to get off, even with clay.

The stuff one learns in school these days! :thumbup:
Decent winery right there: 6 Mile Creek Vineyard.
GL,mD

actually surprisingly i'm in Cornell's School of Hotel Administration. but we do need to fill some random distributive electives outside of our school, i heard good things about this class so i took it! its a good break from financial accounting :thumbup:

Ha! My sister was in the Ag School. Graduated in '85. My parents weren't too happy with her taking "Wines of the World" as an elective lol.

Cornell has a beautiful campus and is a great school.

Good luck, I have run into a lot of Cornell hotely's (sp?) all over the world.

thanks! yeah, hotelies are everywhere around the world, its nuts..

btw they do offer a wine tasting class at the hotel school, i'm pretty pumped about it :D

FWIW I work in corporate finance at one of the major strip resorts in Las Vegas, and I work with about 5 people from Cornell!

I am actually a microbiologist, so I was just curious. At UGA I took a food fermentation class where we had wine and beer tastings and made wine, beer, and yogurt - best class I ever had.