Apetite for random knowledge?
You have come to the right place!
Most of these Topics I have researched because often come up in conversation without us knowing anything about them! Enjoy!
Select from the topics below:
Film Industry Trivia
Source for all these trvia facts have been picked up from movie magazines - mainly the UK magazine Premier
History and Culture
Science
God Bless You, a History of the Sneeze
Originally, sneezing was considered good luck. The Hebrew Talmud says that sneezing means that God will answer your prayers, and Hebrews called sneezing the "Pleasure sent from God". The Greeks and Romans likewise considered sneezing a good omen, and wished each other good health or long life when they heard a sneeze.
The custom of saying "God bless you" after a sneeze was begun literally as a blessing. Pope Gregory the Great (540-604 AD) ascended to the Papacy just in time for the start of the plague (his successor succumbed to it). Gregory (who also invented the ever-popular Gregorian chant) called for litanies, processions and unceasing prayer for God's help and intercession. Columns marched through the streets chanting, "Kyrie Eleison" (Greek for "Lord have mercy"). When someone sneezed, they were immediately blessed ("God bless you!") in the hope that they would not subsequently develop the plague.
Ring around the rosy,
Pocket full of posey,
Ashes, Ashes,
All fall down!
This rhyme started as a description of the plague. "Ring around the rosy" refers to the appearance of the blackened swellings or "buboes" that appeared on the victims. "Pocket full of posey" refers to the fresh flowers that people would carry around and hold near their face to ward off the horrid odor associated with the plague. "Ashes, ashes" is a corruption of "Achoo, Achoo" and refered to the observation that people with the plague frequently sneezed. I think we all can figure out "all fall down" for ourselves.
Anyway, the Pope proposed that people say "May God Bless You" when a person sneezed, in the hopes that this short prayer would protect the person from death. Of course, neither the Pope nor anyone else understood that getting rid of the fleas which carried and spread the plague would have ended it immediately. The plague ran its course, and we were left with a much different cultural view of the meaning of a sneeze.
The connection of sneezing to the plague is not the first association of sneezing with death. According to Man, Myth, and Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion and the Unknown, many cultures, even some in Europe, believe that sneezing expels the soul--the "breath of life"--from the body. That doesn't seem too far-fetched when you realize that sneezing can send tiny particles speeding out of your nose at up to 100 miles per hour!
Opposite to what urban legends say, you heart does not stop when you sneeze. (Nor do your eyes pop out if you can keep them open)
Showercurtains clinging to your leg?
LIKE millions, perhaps even billions, of people, David Schmidt of Amherst, Mass., takes a shower every morning. For the last few years, between first spritz and final drain, a question has vexed him: why does the shower curtain suck in?
Today, thanks to $28,000 worth of high-powered computer software, a Ph.D. in engineering and too much free time, Dr. Schmidt, 31, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts, believes he has an answer. It has to do with why airplanes fly, hurricanes twist and apples fall.
True, the mystery of the sucking shower curtain does not rank high on the ladder of mankind's challenges, and he himself never encountered a sucking curtain until he showered one day at his mother-in-law's house. There, with the showerhead hissing away, the corner of her gossamer-thin shower curtain billowed in and clung clammily to his leg. "It sucked beautifully," he recalled.
For years, apparently, engineering cognoscenti and amateur scientists have wrestled with clinging shower curtains. In 1994, Mr. Schmidt encountered the seemingly humdrum problem on his doctoral examinations at the University of Wisconsin. One camp favors something called the Bernoulli principle, which holds that as water, air and other fluids accelerate, their pressure drops, leading to lift. Like an airplane wing, the shower curtain moves, the Bernoulli backers say, because water from the showerhead accelerates air on one side, letting air rush in and move the curtain.
Another camp favors the buoyancy theory. Hot air on the shower side rises, leading to cooler air pushing the curtain in. But no single theory clinched the question. Curtains, for example, still billow in cold showers.
Enter Professor Schmidt, with an industrial-strength computer program he has helped develop. He is an expert in the computer modeling, or imaging, of sprays, which is useful in diesel engines and the like. First, he drafted a computer image of his mother-in-law's bathtub, with its typically curved shapes, then filled it with 50,000 tetrahedral cells, or pyramid-like structures, that sense velocity and pressure in three dimensions. Finally, the "shower" flowed for 30 seconds at about eight gallons per minute, a bracing blast.
In the end, Dr. Schmidt's home computer crunched numbers for the better part of two weeks, or 1.5 trillion calculations, leading to some surprising answers -- surprising, at least, for engineers.
The shower's water droplets decelerate under the influence of aerodynamic drag, transferring energy to the bathtub's air, which begins to twist like a miniature hurricane turned on its side. As in the eye of a hurricane, the pressure in the center of this disturbance is low, pulling on the shower curtain. Curtain rods keep the top of the curtain in place, but below the showerhead the bottom of the curtain . . . sucks in.
A shower door, heavy shower curtain, or no curtain at all, solves the problem, Professor Schmidt acknowledges. But you knew that already.
(Printed in NY Times July 15th 2001)
Airplane Crash Safety
According to UK airports operator British Airports Authority (BAA), there have been 12 percent fewer passengers in the seven UK airports run by the company in October 2001, compared to the same month last year (1). But, despite recent events, flying remains one of the safest forms of transport.
Twelve people died for each 100million air journeys taken in the UK between 1987 and 1996 - while 34 people died for each 100million journeys by water during the same period (2). Even in the USA, where air travel is more common, there were 5.96 accidents for every 100,000 hours of flight in 2000, and 6.49 accidents for every 100,000 hours of flight in 1999 (5).
An hour spent driving, or even walking, has more potential dangers than an hour spent on a plane: there were eight casualties for every 100million hours of air travel in the UK between 1987 and 1996, but 1463 casualties for every 100million hours of car travel (3).
If you drive for an hour, it seems that you are about 100 times more likely to get hurt than if you fly for an hour. People have died in the UK in every year between 1987 and 1996 while using cars, bicycles, vans and trains. But in six out of these 10 years, nobody died while flying (4).
Of course, vans, bicycles and cars are much more likely to come into contact with other vehicles than are aeroplanes - and such collisions increase the likelihood of fatalities and accidents. Also, if an aeroplane does crash you have much less chance of getting out alive than if your car crashes or your boat sinks. But the statistics suggest that, overall, air travel may be less dangerous than we fear.
See the statistics for each individual Air Carrier -
GO AIR CUBANA!!!
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm
Daylight Savings
Spring forward
Fall Back
At the end of the 19th century, time zones were introduced using the Greenwich Meridian (0 degrees longitude) as the "agreed-to" prime meridian or starting point. Since there are almost exactly 24 hours in a day and 360 degrees in a circle, each time zone was set up to be 15 degrees in width. So, it takes the Sun approximately one hour to traverse each time zone. Thus, if the Sun is at its highest point in the sky over Berlin, Germany (15 degrees east longitude), it'll be at its highest over London (0 degrees longitude) one hour later. In theory, each time zone extends 71/2 degrees east and west of the 15, 30, 45, 60 ...meridians. This means that for no place within the 15 degree time zone will the clock time vary by more than 30 minutes from the Sun time. However, for historic, cultural and economic reasons, there are deviations from this rule.
The idea behind daylight savings time is to give us more daylight in the evenings when most of us can enjoy it. The tradeoff is that the Sun comes up an hour later than it would if we were on standard time. However, since the majority of us are still in the sack at 5:30 in the morning, we wouldn't notice if the Sun is up or not, and it's easier to sleep when the Sun is still below the horizon. Of course, it's no fun to wait at the school bus in the darkness, and farmers don't care to do their morning chores when the Sun hasn't even thought about coming up.Because most of us crave sunlight, and we want to be awake when the Sun is up, cities near the eastern edge of time zones have often found a way to have the time zone relocated so that their city is in the more eastern zone. The point being that they'll have about an hour more light in the evening than if they were in the eastern portion of a time zone. For instance, Cincinnati is in the western part of the eastern time zone rather than in the eastern part of the central time zone. In fact, in each time zone in the US, far more people live west of the standard meridian that bisects the time zone than east of it; approximately 35% of the population lives east of the standard meridian while 65% live west of it. From 1918 to1977 there were 49 changes in the four time zone boundaries, and all but four of them involved a westward change or boundary migration.One of the biggest reasons we change our clocks to Daylight Saving Time (DST) is that it saves energy. Energy use and the demand for electricity for lighting our homes is directly connected to when we go to bed and when we get up. Bedtime for most of us is late evening through the year. When we go to bed, we turn off the lights and TV. In the average home, 25 percent of all the electricity we use is for lighting and small appliances, such as TVs, VCRs and stereos. A good percentage of energy consumed by lighting and appliances occurs in the evening when families are home. By moving the clock ahead one hour, we can cut the amount of electricity we consume each day.Studies done in the 1970s by the U.S. Department of Transportation show that we trim the entire country's electricity usage by about one percent EACH DAY with Daylight Saving Time.Daylight Saving Time "makes" the sun "set" one hour later and therefore reduces the period between sunset and bedtime by one hour. This means that less electricity would be used for lighting and appliances late in the day.We also use less electricity because we are home fewer hours during the "longer" days of spring and summer. Most people plan outdoor activities in the extra daylight hours. When we are not at home, we don't turn on the appliances and lights. A poll done by the U.S. Department of Transportation indicated that Americans liked Daylight Saving Time because "there is more light in the evenings / can do more in the evenings."
While the amounts of energy saved per household are small...added up they can be very large.In the winter, the afternoon Daylight Saving Time advantage is offset by the morning's need for more lighting. In spring and fall, the advantage is less than one hour. So, Daylight Saving Time saves energy for lighting in all seasons of the year except for the four darkest months of the year (November, December, January and February) when the afternoon advantage is offset by the need for lighting because of late sunrise.The American law by which we turn our clock forward in the spring and back in the fall is known as the Uniform Time Act of 1966. The law does not require that anyone observe Daylight Saving Time; all the law says is that if we are going to observe Daylight Saving Time, it must be done uniformly.Daylight Saving Time has been around for most of this century and even earlier.Benjamin Franklin, while a minister to France, first suggested the idea in an essay titled An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light." The essay was first published in the Journal de Paris in April 1784. But it wasn't for more than a century later that an Englishman, William Willett, suggested it again in 1907.Willett was reportedly passing by a home where the shades were down, even though the sun was up. He wrote a pamphlet called "The Waste of Daylight" because of his observations.Willett wanted to move the clock ahead by 80 minutes in four moves of 20 minutes each during the spring and summer months. In 1908, the British House of Commons rejected advancing the clock by one hour in the spring and back again in the autumn.Willett's idea didn't die, and it culminated in the introduction of British Summer Time by an Act of Parliament in 1916. Clocks were put one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) during the summer months.England recognized that the nation could save energy and changed their clocks during the first World War.In 1918, in order to conserve resources for the war effort, the U.S. Congress placed the country on Daylight Saving Time for the remainder of WW I. It was observed for seven months in 1918 and 1919. The law, however, proved so unpopular that it was later repealed.When America went to war again, Congress reinstated Daylight Saving Time on February 2, 1942. Time in the U.S. was advanced one hour to save energy. It remained advanced one hour forward year-round until September 30, 1945.In England, the energy saving aspects of Daylight Saving were recognized again during WWII. Clocks were changed two hours ahead of GMT during the summer, which became known as Double Summer Time. But it didn't stop with the summer. During the war, clocks remained one hour ahead of GMT though the winter .From 1945 to 1966, there was no U.S. law about Daylight Saving Time. So, states and localities were free to observe Daylight Saving Time or not.
This, however, caused confusion -- especially for the broadcasting industry, and for trains and buses. Because of the different local customs and laws, radio and TV stations and the transportation companies had to publish new schedules every time a state or town began or ended Daylight Saving Time.
By 1966, some 100 million Americans were observing Daylight Saving Time through their own local laws and customs. Congress decided to step in end the confusion and establish one pattern across the country. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 (15 U.S. Code Section 260a) created Daylight Saving Time to begin on the last Sunday of April and to end on the last Sunday of October. Any area that wanted to be exempt from Daylight Saving Time could do so by passing a local ordinance. The law was amended in 1986 to begin Daylight Saving Time on the first Sunday in April.
Time Zones
Time zones were first used by the railroads in 1883 to standardize their schedules.
According to the The Canadian Encyclopedia Plus by McClelland & Stewart Inc., Canada's "[Sir Sandford] Fleming also played a key role in the development of a worldwide system of keeping time. Trains had made obsolete the old system where major cities and regions set clocks according to local astronomical conditions. Fleming advocated the adoption of a standard or mean time and hourly variations from that according to established time zones. He was instrumental in convening an International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington in 1884 at which the system of international standard time -- still in use today -- was adopted." In 1918, the U.S. Congress made the U.S. rail zones official under federal law and gave the responsibility to make any changes to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the only federal transportation regulatory agency at the time. When Congress created the Department of Transportation in 1966, it transferred the responsibility for the time laws to the new department.
Do we really only utilize 10% of our brains? (Partly in Norwegian)
10% Myten
Du har hørt det gang på gang; så hvis vi BARE kunne tappe inn på den resterende 90% kapasiteten.
Dette har sikkert holdt deg oppe natt etter natt. Vi har alle brukt endeløse timer på å tenke ut svaret.
Nu er det her!
Dette er bare pølsevev. Og her følger litt info for å bække opp hvorfor dette er tullibull!
Til min store skuffelse har folk innrømmet ikke gidder å lese de 10 sider lange rapportene jeg har sendt om nysets historie eller tids-sonene og sommer-tidens opprinnelse! (hvis du har gått glipp av noen av mailen i serien, så kan de bestilles rett fra forlaget)
Dette er jo veldig veldig skuffende, men derfor skal jeg heretter lage en liten Executive Summary for de giddalause blant dere.
Hjernebruks misforståelsen kan ha oppstått ved et feil sitat av Einstein, eller en mis-tolkning av Pierre Flourens sitt arbeid på 1800 tallet.
Det finnes INGEN medisinsk bevis for at vi kun bruker 10% av hjernen. Derimot kan man måle hjernen i full aktivitet i visse situasjoner. Oftest bruker vi bare en liten del av hjernen, hvert til sitt type arbeid, men tallet 10% er tatt rett ut av luften.
Argumentet at man kan overleve, og til og med fungere, med visse deler av hjernen ødelagt eller fjernet styrker ikke 10% myten, men beviser kun at hjernen er fantastisk tilpasselig, der visse deler av hjernen kan overta oppgavene til en annen. Det er ikke dermed sagt at den ødelagte delen, eller den som har overtatt oppgavene ikke hadde noen funksjon.
Spørsmål, Email Dr. Rasmus eller en litt mer annerkjent Dr. på område. Dr. Chudler - chudler@u.washington.edu
Imaging the Active Brain
In addition to clinical evidence, brain imaging methods appear to refute the 10% brain use statement. For example, positron emission tomography (PET) scans show that much of the brain is active during many different tasks. Often when brain scans are published, they have been manipulated to show relative amounts of brain activity rather than absolute activity. This graphical presentation of the data shows differences in brain activity. Therefore, it may appear that some areas of the brain are inactive when, in fact, they were active, but at a lower level compared to other sites. Brain scans only show activity for the carefully designed isolated tasks being tested, such as memory or visual processing. They do not show activity related to other untested abilities. Imagine the brain is a restaurant kitchen. If you looked in on the kitchen at one time, you may see the chef preparing salad. However, you may not know that the main course is cooking in the oven. Similarly, if you image the brain during a visual task, you will not see the other patterns of activity associated with performing different (simultaneous) tasks.
Evolution and Development Weigh in
From an evolutionary perspective, it is unlikely that a brain that is 90% useless would develop. The brain is an expensive organ to maintain and utilizes a large supply of the body's energy resources. Certainly there are redundant pathways that serve similar functions. This redundancy may be a type of "safety mechanism" should one pathway for a specific function fail. Still, functional brain imaging studies show that all parts of the brain function. Even during sleep, the brain is active. The brain is still being "used"; it is just in a different active state.
From a developmental perspective, the 10% of the brain statement also fails. The adage "use it or lose it" seems to apply to the developing nervous system. During development, many new synapses in the brain are formed. After birth, many synapses are eliminated later on in development. This period of synaptic development and elimination goes on to "fine tune" the wiring of the nervous system. It appears that correct input is required to maintain a synapse. If input to a particular neural system is eliminated, then neurons in this system may not function properly. Nobel prize winners David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel demonstrated this in the visual system. They showed that complete loss of vision would occur when visual information was eliminated during early development. It seems reasonable to suggest that if 90% of the brain was not used, then many neural pathways would likely degenerate.
Brains are quite adaptable and do have the ability to recover after damage. When a brain is damaged, remaining neural tissue can sometimes take over and compensate for the loss. The ability of the brain to recover lost functions does not indicate that the damaged tissue had no function. Rather, this ability illustrates the brain's capacity to reorganize and rewire itself.
It appears that there is no hidden storehouse of untapped brain power. We use all of our brain.
The Myth and the Media
That tired Ten-Percent claim pops up all the time. Last year, national magazine ads for U.S. Satellite Broadcasting showed a drawing of a brain. Under it was the caption, "You only use 11 percent of its potential." Well, they're a little closer than the ten-percent figure, but still off by about 89 percent. In July 1998, ABC television ran promotional spots for "The Secret Lives of Men," one of their offerings for the fall season's lineup. The spot featured a full-screen blurb that read, "Men only use ten percent of their brains."
One reason this myth has endured is that it has been adopted by psychics and other paranormal pushers to explain psychic powers. On more than one occasion I've heard psychics tell their audiences, "We only use ten percent of our minds. If scientists don't know what we do with the other ninety percent, it must be used for psychic powers!" In Reason To Believe: A Practical Guide to Psychic Phenomena, author Michael Clark mentions a man named Craig Karges. Karges charges a lot of money for his "Intuitive Edge" program, designed to develop natural psychic abilities. Clark quotes Karges as saying: "We normally use only 10 to 20 percent of our minds. Think how different your life would be if you could utilize that other 80 to 90 percent known as the subconscious mind" (Clark 1997, 56).
This was also the reason that Caroline Myss gave for her alleged intuitive powers on a segment of "Eye to Eye with Bryant Gumbel," which aired in July of 1998. Myss, who has written books on unleashing "intuitive powers," said that everyone has intuitive gifts, and lamented that we use so little of the mind's potential. To make matters worse, just the week before, on the very same program, correct information was presented about the myth. In a bumper spot between the program and commercials, a quick quiz flashed onscreen: What percentage of the brain is used? The multiple-choice answers ranged from 10 percent to 100 percent. The correct answer appeared, which I was glad to see. But if the producers knew that what one of their interviewees said is clearly and demonstrably inaccurate, why did they let it air? Does the right brain not know what the left brain is doing? Perhaps the Myss interview was a repeat, in which case the producers presumably checked her facts after it aired and felt some responsibility to correct the error in the following week's broadcast. Or possibly the broadcasts aired in sequence and the producers simply did not care and broadcast Myss and her misinformation anyway.
Even Uri Geller, who has made a career out of trying to convince people he can bend metal with his mind, trots out this little gem. This claim appears in his book Uri Geller's Mind-Power Book in the introduction: "Our minds are capable of remarkable, incredible feats, yet we don't use them to their full capacity. In fact, most of us only use about 10 per cent of our brains, if that. The other 90 per cent is full of untapped potential and undiscovered abilities, which means our minds are only operating in a very limited way instead of at full stretch. I believe that we once had full power over our minds. We had to, in order to survive, but as our world has become more sophisticated and complex we have forgotten many of the abilities we once had" (emphasis in original).
Evidence Against the Ten-Percent Myth
The argument that psychic powers come from the unused majority of the brain is based on the logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance. In this fallacy, lack of proof for a position (or simply lack of information) is used to try to support a particular claim. Even if it were true that the vast majority of the human mind is unused (which it clearly is not), that fact in no way implies that any extra capacity could somehow give people paranormal powers. This fallacy pops up all the time in paranormal claims, and is especially prevalent among UFO proponents. For example: Two people see a strange light in the sky. The first, a UFO believer, says, "See there! Can you explain that?" The skeptic replies that no, he can't. The UFO believer is gleeful. "Ha! You don't know what it is, so it must be aliens!" he says, arguing from ignorance.
What follows are two of the reasons that the Ten-Percent story is suspect. (For a much more thorough and detailed analysis of the subject, see Barry Beyerstein's chapter in the new book Mind Myths: Exploring Everyday Mysteries of the Mind [1999].)
Brain imaging research techniques such as PET scans (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) clearly show that the vast majority of the brain does not lie fallow. Indeed, although certain minor functions may use only a small part of the brain at one time, any sufficiently complex set of activities or thought patterns will indeed use many parts of the brain. Just as people don't use all of their muscle groups at one time, they also don't use all of their brain at once. For any given activity, such as eating, watching television, making love, or reading Skeptical Inquirer, you may use a few specific parts of your brain. Over the course of a whole day, however, just about all of the brain is used at one time or another.
The myth presupposes an extreme localization of functions in the brain. If the "used" or "necessary" parts of the brain were scattered all around the organ, that would imply that much of the brain is in fact necessary. But the myth implies that the "used" part of the brain is a discrete area, and the "unused" part is like an appendix or tonsil, taking up space but essentially unnecessary. But if all those parts of the brain are unused, removal or damage to the "unused" part of the brain should be minor or unnoticed. Yet people who have suffered head trauma, a stroke, or other brain injury are frequently severely impaired. Have you ever heard a doctor say, ". . . But luckily when that bullet entered his skull, it only damaged the 90 percent of his brain he didn't use"? Of course not.
Variants of the Ten-Percent Myth
The myth is not simply a static, misunderstood factoid. It has several forms, and this adaptability gives it a shelf life longer than lacquered Spam. In the basic form, the myth claims that years ago a scientist discovered that we indeed did use only ten percent of our brains. Another variant is that only ten percent of the brain had been mapped, and this in turn became misunderstood as ten percent used. A third variant was described earlier by Craig Karges. This view is that the brain is somehow divided neatly into two parts: the conscious mind which is used ten to twenty percent of the time (presumably at capacity); and the subconscious mind, where the remaining eighty to ninety percent of the brain is unused. This description betrays a profound misunderstanding of brain function research.
Part of the reason for the long life of the myth is that if one variant can be proven incorrect, the person who held the belief can simply shift the reason for his belief to another basis, while the belief itself stays intact. So, for example, if a person is shown that PET scans depict activity throughout the entire brain, he can still claim that, well, the ninety percent figure really referred to the subconscious mind, and therefore the Ten-Percent figure is still basically correct.
Regardless of the exact version heard, the myth is spread and repeated, by both the well-meaning and the deliberately deceptive. The belief that remains, then, is what Robert J. Samuelson termed a "psycho-fact, [a] belief that, though not supported by hard evidence, is taken as real because its constant repetition changes the way we experience life." People who don't know any better will repeat it over and over, until, like the admonition against swimming right after you eat, the claim is widely believed. ("Triumph of the Psycho-Fact," Newsweek, May 9, 1994.)
The origins of the myth are not at all clear. Beyerstein, of the Brain Behaviour Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has traced it back to at least the early part of the century. A recent column in New Scientist magazine also suggested various roots, including Albert Einstein and Dale Carnegie (Brain Drain 1999). It likely has a number of sources, principally misunderstood or misinterpreted legitimate scientific findings as well as self-help gurus.
The most powerful lure of the myth is probably the idea that we might develop psychic abilities, or at least gain a leg up on the competition by improving our memory or concentration. All this is available for the asking, the ads say, if we just tapped into our most incredible of organs, the brain.
It is past time to put this myth to rest, although if it has survived at least a century so far, it will surely live on into the new millennium. Perhaps the best way to combat this chestnut is to reply to the speaker, when the myth is mentioned, "Oh? What part don't you use?"
Sneezing From Bright Lights
Pagon was among a flock of docs who, while sitting around a cafeteria table at a pediatrics conference some years back, fell into a discussion of their sternutatory habits. Four of the 10, they discovered, sneezed when exposed to bright light. Being scientists, they wrote up their discovery for publication. Being scientists, they gave the syndrome a really bad acronym. How they figured that "Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst Syndrome" adds up to ACHOO, instead of ADCHOOS, is beyond me. ("Helio" refers to the sun; "Opthalmic" to the eyes.)
Nonetheless it describes a real syndrome. In fact you probably know someone with ACHOO: Twenty to 30 percent of the population suffers this amusing abnormality.
The absence of a firm estimate reflects geneticists' low esteem for the subject and a tragic lack of scholarship.
In a nutshell when a person with ACHOO steps outdoors into sunlight, he or she suffers "nearly uncontrollable paroxysms of sneezing provoked in a reflex fashion," Pagon and her collaborators wrote. The probing practitioners noted that not only does ACHOO syndrome run in families (it's a dominant trait), but genetics also determines the number of sneezes.
"In my family it's three sneezes," says Pagon, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, "but someone else's family had eight." If that's starting to sound a little less amusing, consider that one of the subjects reported an ACHOO attack involving 43 outbursts.
ACHOO, however, isn't the only syndrome that can bring on an outburst. Sneezing, it turns out, can be inspired by a bewildering range of nonsensical stimuli.
Sneezing fits can be triggered by combing hair, tweezing eyebrows, rubbing the inner corner of the eye, and even by eating too much.
Yes, eating too much. Eleven years after ACHOO got its name, another scientific paper chronicled the sad fate of a man, his three brothers, one of his two sisters, his grandfather, his father, an uncle and the uncle's son. All must harass their hankies after a big meal, and the number of sneezes for each family member runs from three to 15. Imagine Thanksgiving at their house.
Naturally another scientist proposed another truly awful acronym, SNATIATION, which is a combination of "sneeze" and "satiation" and an acronym for "Sneezing Noncontrollably at a Time of Indulgence of the Appetite -- a Trait Inherited and Ordained to Be Named."
But even if it's clear when some people have this sneezing reflex, why they do remains a mystery.
.
"If 20 percent of people do it, you'd think there must be some advantage to it," says Pagon, but she won't even venture a guess as to what that advantage might be.
Reflexes are bodily functions that require no input from the brain. When you touch a hot stove, for instance, an "ouch" telegram travels up the nerves to the spinal cord, and the spinal cord replies with a directive to retract your hand. Genetic quirks involving reflexes are unusual -- and therefore intriguing -- even though they don't cause death and disease, Pagon says.
"Genetics is the study of human variation," Pagon says. "Sneezing is like blood groups and skin color. Because it doesn't make a difference [to your health], studying sneezing might be considered frivolous. But to know the location of one more gene that's part of the nervous system is a good thing."
-I found this from discovery.com
The Penny From Empire State Building
We all know this story right? If you drop a penny off the Empire State building, evidently it will have so much speed that it will pierce into someone's skull by the time it hits the ground.
Well the short answer to this urban legend is.... HUMBUG!
Saw a great episode of Mythbusters where they guys converted a staple gun into a penny-slinger.
Shooting the penny at a speed of 64Mph(Just above 100Km/h) they measured the pennys impact on various surfaces.
It made absolutely no impact on Asphalt or concrete.
Neither did it make any imprint on their ballistics test head made from gelatin. Afterwards they even shot it at themselves without causing much pain.
Sorry guys - no killing of innocent pedestrians by the cost of a penny.
To test even higher speeds, they converted a gun into a penny-slinger and shot the penny at a speed of three times that of sound.
It then made a small impact on the concrete, but didnt pierce it. Had quite an impact on the coin though - flattening the face of good old Abe.
Nor did the penny pierce their test dummy. (With equal properties as those of a human head)
Curious George
Putting an end to Ignorance!
- Why is the sky blue? The rays of the sun, in striking the earth'satmospheree, are scattered by the countless tiny specks that fill the air, the blue rays beingscatteredd farther than the red. It is thus the blue rays which we see, and which lead us to believe that the sky is of that color. If the air were free of all particles of dust, the sky would be quite dark, relieved only by the brightness of the sun and the moon and of the stars which would then always be visible.
- When do we shake hands at meetings? Students of folk lore trace the origin of handshaking to primitive magic; the physical contact of the hands symbolized that each of parties yielded himself up to the power of the other and united with him in peace and friendship; or signified the ratification of a compact or pledge. We still clinch an agreement or a business deal by "shaking hands on it." This element of contract is clearly seen in the Roman marriage ceremony, in which as also among the ancient Hindus the clasping of hands by bride and bridegroom was a prominent feature.
- Who introduced the potato to Europe? No one knows for certain, though the credit is usually given to Hieronymus Cardan, a monk. Sir Walter Raleigh was not its introducer. He planted potatoes on his Irish estates in 1586, but the vegetable had been known to the Spaniards for many years previously. Both Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake have been credited with its introduction into England, the former in 1563, the latter in 1580, but it is now held that they brought home the "sweet potato," not the ordinary variety. Drake's claim is upheld on a statue of the navigator at Offenburg, in Germany. An inscription on the base reads: "Sir Francis Drake, introducer of the Potato into Europe in the year 1580.
- What Does Goodbye Mean? Goodbye is a shortened and corrupted form of God be with you. The expression has had in its long life many spellings, of which God be why you and Goodbye are representative. God became good probably by association with Good morning, Good evening, and Good day which were probably themselves shortened forms of God give you good morning, etc. The suggestion has been made that Goodbye is a corruption of God buy you but the earliest forms of the salutation show that this is not the case. Many common exclamations, such as bless you, save us, and preserve us used formerly to begin with God, Mercy on us is an abbreviation of God the Lord have mercy on us.
- What is the origin of nicknames? Primitive mans habit of regarding his real name as his own private property and so rarely if ever to be used. To his companions he was therefore known by what was formerly called in England an eke (i.e., added) name. Slovenly pronunciation turned this into a nickname.
- How did surnames begin? Hereditary surnames were unknown among the Anglo-Saxons. It was not until the twelfth century that these came into use, and not universally even then. Many of them were formed by adding son to the fathers Christian name, such as Johnson, Ferguson, and son on. Others sprang from localities as Attwood, Byfield, Green, Abbey, Townsend, who were domiciled respectively at or by the wood, field, green, abbey and town's end. More important people took the name of the village or township in which they lived, for example John or Derby would later be plain John Derby. A very large class ofsurnamess recall the occupations of their original owners, as Smith, Miller, Baker, Tanner, Fuller, Mason, Dyer, Abbott; while a vast number arose from nicknames and epithets (not always complimentary) given to theiroriginall bearers on account of their personal appearance or characteristics. A few taken at random are Hogge, Fox, Short, Swift, Longman, Rich isselff explanatory; but not to Power; which means the exact opposite and was originally poor. Not all English surnames are English in origin. Russell for example is Anglo French and means red haired.
- Where is spring cleaning compulsory? In Hungary, where in 1937 it was made compulsory for all lofts, garrets and cellars to be spring cleaned, inflammable material removed, and cloth and paper stored in fireproof receptacles. The fine for non-compliance with the order was 30 pounds in towns and 10 pounds in county districts.
- What is the origin of mind your P's and Q's? Various theories have been put forward. Some say that it was a warning to printers apprentices when sorting type the letters p and q being almost identical in form, others that it was used in inns amount owing being chalked on a board in order that customers should not order more than they could pay for when settling day arrived.
- What is the difference between beer and ale? Today, virtually none. Lager beer is never called ale, nor are stout and porter, which technically are black beers, but other wise the term beer is taken to include ale. Only at one period, the fifteenth century, was the distinction clear cut. The English in England before the Norman Conquest drank both ale and beer, but what the difference was is not known. During the fourteenth century the terms appear to have meant strong and weak beer, as better beer cost four pence a gallon, penny ale only one penny. Meanwhile, German brewers were beginning to use hops in the making of beer, and it is though that English soldiers fighting on the Continent during the hundred years' War brought home the taste for this new liquor, for which apparently the name imported into England before 1400, and the ensuing century saw beer breweries of which latter at least seven were established in London by 1436. The struggle came to a climax or was ended, in 1483, when the use of hops in the making of ale was prohibited.
- Who invented red currant jelly? This is a matter of dispute between England and France. In August, 1937, the French unveiled an obelish to the memory of Perrin Lamonthe, for whom they claim the honor, at Velainesen-Barrois. Lamonthe, they say, first made this delightful confection in 1364. On the other hand, English cooks claim that Edward I used the jelly a century before that date.
- How hot is the Sun? The temperature of the surface of the sun is believed to be at least 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. In such intense heat every substance known on earth would be reduced to gas. This is one of the reasons why it is thought that the sun is not solid, but is chiefly made up of various forms of gases. If the light of the sun were to be shut off from the earth we should perish from cold and starvation. If only 10 per cent of its heat was lost large parts of the earth would become frozen and desolate wastes.
- How many planets are there? There are eight chief planets which revolve about the sun and comprise what is called the solar system. The names of these planets in the order of their distance from the sun are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, Mercury and Venus are called the inferior planets because the lie between the earth and the sun. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are known as the superior planets. The inferior planets move about the sun, faster than the earth and the superior ones more slowly. All the planets belong to one family, but they differ in size and temperature. Some are smaller than the earth, some hundreds of times larger. Some are very hot, others very cold. Jupiter is the largest of all the planets and Saturn one of the most famous because of its beautiful luminous rings. In 1930 a new planet called Pluto was discovered. Some astronomers consider it to be a major planet, but this has not yet been proved and is possibly merely an unusual minor planet.
- What is the furthest planet from Earth? Pluto, which varies between 2,750,000,000 and 4,640,000,000 miles distant. Neptune, the next furthest away at times exceeds the minimum distance of Pluto from earth by over 150,000,000 miles, but it approaches 75,000,000 miles nearer than Pluto does.
Literature and Mythology
- Who First Translated the Bible into English? St. Aldhelm (about 640 - 709) is said to have translated the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon verse; the Venerable Bede translated part of the Gospel of St. John into Anglo-Saxon prose; and the name of King Alfred is doubtfully connected with the "Paris Psalter," a translation of Psalms 1-50. During the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries other translations of parts of the Bible were mae (none is known from the thirteenth century), but the first complete translations are the two attributed to John Wycliffe (about 1320 - 1384) and his associates. The Early Version appeared about 1382; the Later Version some fourteen years later. It is not known whether Wycliffe actually took part in the work himself.
- Who compiled the authorized version? A band of fifty four eminent scholars, who were divided for the task into six groups. Two groups met at Oxford, two at Cambridge and two at Westminster. A committee meeting in London had general supervision of the work. The authorized Version was suggested at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, and the plan for its execution was drawn up by James I. The work was based on what was called the Bishops' Bible, published in 1568, which the revisers were told was to be followed and as little altered as the truth of the original will permit." The preparation of the Bible took about 3 1/2 years.
- Which Books of the Bible are Poems? The Book of Job, the Psalms, the Song of Solomon (the Song of Songs), and the Lamentations of Jeremiah are poems either wholly or in part. The first two chapters and the epilogue of Job, the Song of Solomon is apparently a love lyric; while the Lamentations of Jeremiah are short elegies.
Mankind Through the Ages
- Who was called the Scourge of God? Attila (about A.D. 406-453) king of the Huns, on account of the chastisement which he inflicted upon the corrupt and demoralized Roman Empire. The author of the appellation is not known with certainty.
- What desert kingdom defied the Roman Empire? Palmyra, a city and kingdom situated in a desert oasis of Syria, 150 miles north east of Damascus. In A.D. 270, under their energetic queen Zenobia, the Palmyrans seized Egypt, where Zenobia and her son, on whose behalf she was ruling, began to issue coinage bearing the imperial title of Rome. The rightful Emperor, Aurelian, recovered Egypt, marched in person into Asia Minor, defeated Zenobia, and took Palmyra by siege. Zenobia was taken captive to Rome, where apparently she settled down happily as a private citizen. In 272 the Palmyrana revolted Aurelian slaughtered the inhabitants and laid waste the city, which never after recovered its former greatness.
- How were Egyptian Hieroglyphics deciphered? The key to the decipherment of hieroglyphics was the celebrated Rosetta Stone, discovered at Rosetta in Egypt in 1799 by an French officer named Boussard, and now is in the British Museum. It bears three copies in Hieroglyphics in demotic or the Egyptian running hand and in Greek of a decree of the Ptolemaic period, with the Greek and the former was gradually deciphered. The leading name associated with the deciphering is that of J.F. Champollion (1790 - 1832).
- What is the meaning of Fid Def on British Coins? In stands for Fidei defensor, Defender of the Faith, a title conferred upon King Henry VIII by Pope Leo X in 1521 for his pamphlet against Luther entitled "Assertion of the Seven Sacraments."
The Wonderful World We Live In
- How big is the earth? The earth is a sphere slightly fl attended at the poles and just under 25,000 miles in equatorial circumference. The diameter of the earth is slightly greater at the equator than it is from pole to pole; at the equator it is 7,926.68 miles and from pole to pole 7,899.98 miles, a difference of 26.7 miles. The total surface of the globe is nearly 200 million square miles.
- What is the age of the Earth? Between 1,500 and 3,000 million years. The most accurate methods of calculating it are provided by radio activity, that is the breaking up of elements of high atomic weights into lead. By examination of the oldest known minerals subject to this process the minimum age of the earth is shown to be 1,500 million years; the quantity of lead present precludes a greater maximum than 3,000 million years.
- How hot is the Interior of the Earth? The earth is believed to consist of a solid outer shell of rock and metallic core, probably liquid. The heat at any point in the shell is due to heat at any point in the shell is due to (a) original heat and (b) heat due to radio activity. Both these factors can be calculated within certain limits of error. At about twelve and a half miles from the surface the temperature is probably about 560 degrees Centigrade, at 200 miles down probably more than double this heat; below 400 miles probably three times as hot. The metallic core is very likely so hot that but for the enormous pressure of the shell it would vaporize.
- Is the Earth becoming colder? When the earth broke off from the sun it cooled rapidly from its molten state, and a thick outer crust was formed. Now the temperature remains approximately the same; the heat lost by conduction is made up by heat from radio activity in the rocks.
Unsolved Mysteries
- Why does food that has gotten heated in the microwave get so much quicker cold than what had been heated in stove
My research so far leads me to believe that it has something to do with the magnetron which creates the radiowaves which in turn spins the water molecules of the food (or whatever you are heating)
- Why is the water in Norwegian lakes so shiny and reflective?Final proof of whether all places on earth have the same ammount of sunlight in a year. Ex. Somewhere on the Equator and the North Pole.
My University science professor said that it was the case... but do we have proof?Do you actually reduce harmfull bacterias on a spoon if you blow on it after it has fallen on the ground?Why is it so much further from the toilet rim to the water on European toilets than AmericanWhy can't we use Cell Phones aboard airplanes. They are fully legal in private planes. I have not yet seen a single proof that cellphones interrupt the on-flight navigation tools.
Here are my two working theories.
A)Airplanes are afraid to use their on-flight phone monopoly
B)Cellphone companies experience heavy load on network when signal is recieved from 30 000 feet (contact with several radio towers at the same time)Why do dryers eat socks?
- Get me some real data on "dying in a plan accident" Statistics. Its obviously in the way you read the data. Time in car VS time in plane. It's like comparing the chance of dying when walking around outside VS sitting on the toilet.
Buhumbug!
Send me more, or if you are an evil air-company man, then send me the proof of why you won't let us use our cellphones!
Most Expensive movies ever made
(Figures in inflation adjusted USD 2006 Value)
Cleopatra (1963) - 286.4m
Titanic (1997) - 247m
Waterworld (1995) - 229m
Terminator 3 - 216.4m
Spiderman 2 - 210m
King Kong - 207m
Wild Wild West - 203.4m
Revenue breakdown from a movie ticket
Breakdown of where the price of your movie ticket really goes.
30% - Investors and Filmmakers (Investors are "first out")
50% - Distributor (25-28% for smaller films - Prod, Distribution and marketing)
20% - Cinema (why the popcorn costs so much)
Geographic breakdown of a "standard" Hollywood film earnings
A typical films earnings breakdown from around the globe
North America - 34%
Western Europe - 30%
East Asiua - 15%
UK - 10%
South America - 4%
Australasia - 4%
Central and eastern Europe - 2%
R.O.W - 1%
To sweat like a pig - one great big conspiracy!
To sweat like a pig
Since pigs dont have sweatglands, I have often wondered why we use the expression "to sweat like a pig" or in Norwegian; "Å svette som en gris".
I have not been able to get any closer to the origin of this expression, but at least I have been able to confirm my suspicion that this has somehow been started by one of the other farm animals (possibly the "cute" sheep?) to somehow heighten their own worth by lowering that of the pig?
The excerpt below is in Norwegian and can be found in the link below, but the main gist is as follows:
Because the pigs cant sweat they roll around in mud to cool down. The process of vaporizing the water in the mud requires energy and thus reduces the temperature for the pig. It's basically the same as we do, but we dont need mud in order to do it.
So why mud you might ask yourself - well mud cools/vaporizes more slowly than water; thus prolonging the cooling process for the pig.
So we might in fact say "clever as a pig" from now on.The next qustion is whether the pig mafia of the east has anything to do with the spreading of the expression "dumb as a sheep". All the pigs in question refused to comment.
Når vi mennesker blir litt varme i trøya begynner vi å svette, men å si at man svetter som en gris er ikke bare en fornærmelse for svinet, men i tillegg en blank løgn. Griser svetter nemlig ikke i det hele tatt, og det betyr at de ikke har noen innebygd måte å kvitte seg med varme på. Men svin er ikke tapt bak noen vogn må du tro! I stedet for å gjøre huden våt med svette, ruller de seg på fuktig mark og blir våte likevel. Idet fuktigheten fordamper stjeler vannpartiklene energi fra huden, og grisen blir kvitt den overflødige varmen. Det er heller ikke noen tilfeldighet at svina velger å velte seg i gjørme. Vannet i mudderet fordamper nemlig saktere enn rent vann, og dermed får grisen en passelig langtidskjøling i stedet for superkjapp pangkjøling
Source: http://www.nrk.no/programmer/tv/newton/1653766.html
WHY do open faced sandwiches ALWAYS fall down with the jam
The breadmystery: To everyone's woe (at least everyone who likes bread as much as I do-people who lived with me and my breadmachine and a loaf per day can testify that) open faced sandwiches (Us Norwegians like those best) like to fall with the spread face down. And its not just bad luck - its simply physics. With the average height of a bench, a sandwich manages to roll exactly half a round before it hits the ground - so the next time your liver-pate sandwich (or fish-roe paste? Mmmmmm... Love Norwegian eating habits) lands face down, don't swear yourself for bad luck. Its happens to all of us.
Do toilets and bathtubs REALLY drain counterclockwise in Australia?
Toilet and bathtub running counter-clockwise south of the equator.... though this is true on a pure statistical basis, there are many other factors that are much more important than the earth's rotation. Minute movements in the water can remain long after you got out of the bathtub or finished your business on the loo - those have a much stronger effect than the earths rotation.
A List of VERY cool things to do to your body
* How to cure a tickling throat - dig into that ear
When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm," says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose, and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. "This spasm relieves the tickle."
* How to cure a toothache
Just rub ice on the back of your hand, on the V-shaped webbed area between your thumb and index finger. A Canadian study found that this technique reduces toothache pain by as much as 50 percent compared with using no ice. The nerve pathways at the base of that V stimulate an area of the brain that blocks pain signals from the face and hands.
* Clearing a stuffed nose - no cleenex or sudafed required
A good way to relieve sinus pressure is by alternately thrusting your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then pressing between your eyebrows with one finger. This causes the vomer bone, which runs through the nasal passages to the mouth, to rock back and forth, says Lisa DeStefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University college of osteopathic medicine. The motion loosens congestion; after 20 seconds, you'll feel your sinuses start to drain.
* Curing your dizzy head
Put your hand on something stable. The part of your ear responsible for balance -- the cupula -- floats in a fluid of the same density as blood. "As alcohol dilutes blood in the cupula, the cupula becomes less dense and rises," says Dr. Schaffer. This confuses your brain. The tactile input from a stable object gives the brain a second opinion, and you feel more in balance. Because the nerves in the hand are so sensitive, this works better than the conventional foot-on-the-floor wisdom.
* How to cure that stich (or "hold" as we say in Norwegian) when running
If you're like most people, when you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.
* How to relieve that side stich (or "hold" as we say in Norwegian)
When you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.
* Curing that Freezing head
We've all been there, eating your Ben And Jerrys while watching lost and suddenly at the end of the bucket you realized you ate too fast and too much and your head is pounding frost! Here comes the solution to all your troubles.
Press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much as you can. "Since the nerves in the roof of your mouth get extremely cold, your body thinks your brain is freezing, too," says Abo. "In compensating, it overheats, causing an ice-cream headache." The more pressure you apply to the roof of your mouth, the faster your headache will subside.
* How to cure that sleeping limb (In norway we call this having "ants")
If ex your hand falls asleep, rock your head from side to side. It'll painlessly banish your pins and needles in less than a minute, says Dr. DeStefano. A tingly hand or arm is often the result of compression in the bundle of nerves in your neck; loosening your neck muscles releases the pressure. Compressed nerves lower in the body govern the feet, so don't let your sleeping dogs lie. Stand up and walk around.
* Here's the portion that will make you rich
So you are diving for pearls, but all the other boys stay down much longer than you and take all the nice ones... here is the trick to outsmart them all!
Take several short breaths first -- essentially, hyperventilate. When you're underwater, it's not a lack of oxygen that makes you desperate for a breath; it's the buildup of carbon dioxide, which makes your blood acidic, which signals your brain that somethin' ain't right. "When you hyperventilate, the influx of oxygen lowers blood acidity," says Jonathan Armbruster, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at Auburn University. "This tricks your brain into thinking it has more oxygen." It'll buy you up to 10 seconds.
* And Finally; A Party trick
So you have solved all your problems and are ready to go to the party. This is how to really impress the host (and ALL the other present) (if someone who is a CSCS says so, this has to be right... and NO - I will not tell you what a CSCS is....)
Have a person hold one arm straight out to the side, palm down, and instruct him to maintain this position. Then place two fingers on his wrist and push down. He'll resist. Now have him put one foot on a surface that's a half inch higher (a few magazines) and repeat. This time his arm will cave like the French. By misaligning his hips, you've offset his spine, says Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., co-owner of Results Fitness, in Santa Clarita, California. Your brain senses that the spine is vulnerable, so it shuts down the body's ability to resist.
Baluba - opprinnelsen av utrykket
Baluba - a peculiar Origin
This is primarily going to be interresting for Norwegians, but just in case anyone else is curious, I'm posting this in English.
Many Norwegians use the word "Baluba" - it used to describe disarray and chaos.
The funny thing is that the word does not exist in any dictionary - neither Norwegian nor German, English, French.... and yet it is used both in oral speach as well as in the written word (newspapers and books alike).
The expression probably refers to the Baluba tribe in Zaire - as far as I can understand it is their history of fighting that has brought about this expression's origin.
But how it made its way to this remote portion of the world is beyond my understanding.
Does anyone outside of Norway know of this expression? Please email me.
Recently when I raised this issue it was even guessed that the expressions is particularly used in Bergen - since my family is from Bergen, it is not impossible that I picked it up that way.... Another person at the table who grew up in Oslo had never heard of the expression.
If anyone has any thoughts on this I would love to hear it.
Cowtipping - breaking down the urban legend
I remember at camp how some kids over breakfast said they had been out cowtipping during the night....
Guess not so much after all.
I've always wanted to tip one myself though, so I am also slightly dissapointed at this news....
Great illustration of force needed in the actual article - link at bottom.
Cow-tipping myth hasn't got a leg to stand on
By Jack Malvern
IT IS the kind of story you hear from a friend of a friend — how, after a long night in a rural hostelry and at a loss for entertainment in the countryside, they head out into a nearby field.
There, according to the second-hand accounts, they sneak up on an unsuspecting cow and turn the poor animal hoof over udder.
But now, much to the relief of dairy herds, the sport of cow-tipping has been debunked as an urban, or perhaps rural, myth by scientists at a Canadian university.
Margo Lillie, a doctor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, and her student Tracy Boechler have conducted a study on the physics of cow-tipping.
Ms Boechler, now a trainee forensics analyst for the Royal Canadian Mounted Corps, concluded in her initial report that a cow standing with its legs straight would require five people to exert the required force to bowl it over.
A cow of 1.45 metres in height pushed at an angle of 23.4 degrees relative to the ground would require 2,910 Newtons of force, equivalent to 4.43 people, she wrote.
Dr Lillie, Ms Boechler's supervisor, revised the calculations so that two people could exert the required amount of force to tip a static cow, but only if it did not react.
"The static physics of the issue say . . . two people might be able to tip a cow," she said. "But the cow would have to be tipped quickly — the cow's centre of mass would have to be pushed over its hoof before the cow could react."
Newton's second law of motion, force equals mass multiplied by acceleration, shows that the high acceleration necessary to tip the cow would require a higher force. "Biology also complicates the issue here because the faster the [human] muscles have to contract, the lower the force they can produce. But I suspect that even if a dynamic physics model suggests cow tipping is possible, the biology ultimately gets in the way: a cow is simply not a rigid, unresponding body."
Another problem is that cows, unlike horses, do not sleep on their feet — they doze. Ms Boechler said that cows are easily disturbed. "I have personally heard of people trying but failing because they are either using too few people or being too loud.
"Most of these 'athletes' are intoxicated."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1858246,00.html
Polyandry - the culture of sharing the love
Polyandry
It's when several men share one wife.
I thought it was usually the other way around, but evidently it survives in some mountainregions in Nepal.
Seem's practial too! The wife at least is happy; "My husbands can take it in turns to go out for business, so I'm happy,"
Further - it is great because brothers don't have to split the land they have inherited... they do have to share their wife though.
"A 22-year-old man in Barauntse, Chakka Lama, told the BBC he was absolutely committed to the wife, 10 years older, whom he shares with his one younger and two older brothers, even though he cannot even remember the marriage ceremony."
I guess threesomes aren't frowned upon in these communities - Probably save on heat that way too! The more the merrier.
Here is the newsarticle if anyone is interrested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4461196.stm
Male nipples - neither here or there
Why do men have nipples
So who DO men have nipples you might ask yourself?
I obviously do all the time (I mean seriously - who doesnt)
The research I've found is slightly differing, but this seems to have been the most detailed as of yet.
Key words I have found out are Autosomes and sex hormones - write it behind your ear (or next to your nipple if you must)
Nobody really knows why men have nipples. Nipples aren't a sex-linked characteristic. In other words, nipples are just one of those sexually neutral pieces of equipment, like arms or brains, that humans get regardless of sex.
As you may know, every human being gets a unique set of 23 pairs of chromosomes at conception. These fall into two categories. One pair of chromosomes determines sex--the XX combination means you become female, the XY combination means you become male.
The other 22 pairs, the non-sex chromosomes (they're called autosomes), supply what we might call the standard equipment that all humans get. These 22 pairs constitute an all-purpose genetic blueprint that in effect is programmed for either maleness or femaleness by the sex chromosomes. The programming is done by the hormones secreted by the sex glands.
For example, the autosomes give you a voice box, while the sex hormones determine whether it's going to be a deep male voice or a high female voice. Similarly, the autosomes give you nipples, and the sex hormones determine whether said nipples are going to be functioning (in females) or not (in males).
One interesting consequence of the developmental set-up just described is that during the very early stages of fetal life, before the sex hormones have had a chance to do their stuff, all humans are basically bisexual. Among other things, you have two sets of primitive plumbing--one male, one female. Only one set develops into a mature urogenital system, but you retain traces of the other for the rest of your life.
It's tempting, therefore, to say that male nipples are yet another vestige of your carefree bisexual youth. Trouble is, male nipples are hardly vestigial. They're full-sized and fully equipped with blood vessels, nerves, and all the usual appurtenances of functioning organs. Why this should be so nobody knows--in some other mammals, such as rats and mice, male nipple development is completely suppressed by the male sex hormones. (Incidentally, don't start thinking that at one time our human male ancestors must have suckled their young. So far as anybody knows, male lactation has never developed in any mammalian species.)
Human nipples appear in the third or fourth week of development, well before the sex characteristics. (The sex hormones start to assert themselves at seven weeks.) As many as seven pairs of nipples are arranged along either side of a "milk line," a ridge of skin that runs from the upper chest to the navel.
Normally only one pair amounts to anything, but on about one baby in a hundred you can detect some vestige of the other ones, usually on the order of a freckle. There are cases of women who ended up with an extra breast, which made them freak show candidates not so many years ago. Luckily today the women can avail themselves of corrective surgery while the rest of us can watch Jenny Jones.
Anyway, both male and female babies are born with the main milk ducts intact--the gland that produces milk is there in the male, but it remains undeveloped unless stimulated by the female hormone, estrogen. Occasionally, a male baby is born with enough of his mother's estrogen in his body to produce a bizarre phenomenon known as "witches' milk," with the male glands, suitably stimulated, pumping away at the moment of birth.
In the adult male, the dormant glands can still be revived by a sufficient dose of estrogen. Actual lactation is rare--only a couple cases have been recorded. But at least one writer (Daly, 1978) has suggested that the "physiological impediments to the evolution of male lactation do not seem individually surmountable." Meaning we may yet see the dawn of the truly liberated household.
When lost at sea; do you drink saltwater? or your own urine - simple science
If stranded on a desert island, should you drink seawater or your own urine?
Seawater is more than three times as concentrated as blood. Drinking saltwater forces your body to to deal with a more concentrated solution than its own fluids. As a result, your body must excrete it through the kidneys as urine. The kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than salt water, so if you drink seawater, you'll be peeing alot and losing an excess of water. This would cause your body to dehydrate, leaving an excess of sodium in your bloodstream. This again causes your cell to shrink and malfunction.
Muscles would become weak and ache, the heart would beat irregularly, you become confused and then you die...
Drinking urine is probably safer, but but the catch-22 is that you dont have any water to drink, you will become dehydrated and not produce any urine.
(Source: Why do men have nipples)
Controlled Explosions - not so controlled after all?
With ref to everything that has happened here in London lately, we keep hearing the word "Controlled explosion" - sounds to me a bit like an oxymoron...
The police blocked off several blocks radius around my office yesterday and told us to stay inside as they were were doing a "controlled explosion" on a car along Picadilly.... never heard any sound of an explosion though....
Here at least is a runthrough of what it is.- Also I have included a short text blurb I received from a friend of mine who is in Baghdad.
I invite anyone with more information on the subject to post comments.
Thanks
In the news, you will quite frequently hear about a "controlled explosion", especially in connection with "suspicious packages" and other fears of terrorism. However, it is only very rarely explained what one of those controlled explosions actually does, nor how it is planned or executed.
* How bombs work
Anyone who has ever seen a thriller film, will have seen a couple of sticks of dynamite, a huge, visible timer, and a red, blue, and green wire. In real life, however, a bomb-builder would never make such a device. A serious, self-respecting terrorist will create a device that is as simple as possible, but also tamper-resistant, through using a motion sensor (which sets off the bomb in case of a change in acceleration (G-force) such as being picked up), a pickup switch (A physical switch that gets activated if the device gets moved), a power loop (that sets off the device if the power from the main battery is cut - the classical "red wire, blue wire" thing you see in films) or a combination of the above. Particularly serious terrorists might use a proximity or light sensors, and would definitely use duct tape or similar around the entire device to make sure that none of the actual mechanics are visible.
Most non-suicide-bomber explosive devices will be either on a remote controller or a timer - or a combination of both. When a terrorist wants to set off the device, they can do so via a pager or a mobile telephone. The advantage of this - for the terrorist - is that the device can be detonated from anywhere in the world. Other forms of remote controlling can be done with radio signals (such as used in remote controlled planes etc) etc. Timed devices can be set to go off at a particular time (like an alarm clock) or after a particular time (countdown timers). If a timed device is used, however, the terrorists will almost certainly disable any read-out: There is no way they are going to give the anti-bomb-squad the benefit of being able to see how much time they have to defuse the device.
* How a controlled explosion works
The first port of call for the police or army bomb squad is to see if they can defuse the bomb. This is often done by a remote-controlled robot, who will try to remove or disconnect either the ignition system (this might be a primer charge such as a blast cap) or the timing / remote control device. The remote-controlled robot can have a series of cameras (infra-red, colour, etc), sensors (geiger-counters, swab sensors etc, to find out what the explosive device consists of) and remote-controllable tools etc.
If the defusing succeeds, the device might still be dangerous, in case the terrorists have installed secondary detonation devices, such as movement sensors etc. If the defusing fails, even more danger is present. In both cases, the bomb experts will want to conduct a controlled explosion.
"Controlled explosions" is not actually an overly precise term, as explosions can be extremely difficult to control, because they - well... they explode. The "controlled" part, then, describes the act of controlling one or more aspects of an impending explosion.
One of the aspects that can be controlled is the timing. Some of the remote controlled robots can be fitted with a shotgun, and shooting at the explosive device is a form of controlled explosion. Especially when dealing with high-explosives, shooting at the actual detonation mechanism might actually disrupt the explosive device, meaning that while the primer charge might go off, the main (and most dangerous charge) might not go off. The "controlled" element of this type of explosion is the timing: Because the bombs squad know when they are planning to shoot the device, they can make sure that all civilians are out of the area at the time of the potential explosion, which would minimise casualties.
Another aspect that can be controlled in some cases, is location. If the bomb is suspected to be inside a van parked next to a structural pillar of a large building, for example, they can move the actual van away from the hot-spot which would cause the most damage. If the bomb is in a bag or hold-all, using a remote-controlled robot to move the bag away from a high-risk area (such as in the basement of a building) into a lower-risk area.
In other cases, a controlled explosion can be done by putting a second explosive device next to the suspected bomb. The bomb squad can then place a heavy, damping material around the area, and set off the secondary device. The hope is that the secondary device will either disable the main bomb without setting it off, or set it off, and hope that the explosion will do only minimal damage.
In a final scenario, a heavy metal shield can be used to deflect the explosive force away from sensitive areas.
Often, bomb squads will use a combination of two or more of the techniques above. If a controlled explosion has to be used, damage is unavoidable, but the idea is to limit the damage and eliminate the loss of life as far as possible.
Here is the info from a friend of mine who is in Iraq:
They do a lot of controled detinations here. Basically, they find
something suspicious and they blow it up in place rather than moving
it. The term also applies to when they blow the doors off someone's
house. Controlled Detting a car (it can be a verb) in downtown london
would be intense, as the blast would be so big. it would probably
shatter windows 20 meters away.
Explosions also tend to be very,
very loud. What's breaking the windows is the sounds wave. Hiding
behind a brick wall, fourty feet from a controlled debt on a door, I
can often feel the wave of pressurized air reaching me. And the
explosives for that are like two cigarette packs.
Why do avocados turn brown? (and how to avoid it)
When the meat of the Avocado is exposed to air, oxidation occurs. This is because of an enzume called polyphenol oxidase. This enzyme works on phenolic compounds in the flesh of the avocado, changing their chemical structure and thus their color.
The best way to prevent oxygen intrusion is to take plastic wrap and seal it over the guacamole.
You can attack the other culprit, the enzyme, in a couple of ways. Refrigeration will slow down the action of the enzyme. Since the enzyme doesn't like acidic conditions, adding something acidic to the guacamole such as lime or lemon juice will slow the reaction of the enzyme with oxygen
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