The "My word, that's an interesting fact!" thread

[Hiroi Sekai]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Just go on Youtube and search "Carl Sagan" and watch the clips from his old show.

Oh Carl Sagan, I remember going to the official page and watching all the videos.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Dunno if you'd call it overly interesting but anyway, I found it curious though. The 1946 Sydney Easter show had over well over 2 million visitors. By itself, that might not seem all that impressive until you consider that Sydney's population at the time was 1.8 million.

[MrTerrorist]

A simple physics demonstration.

What it shows: Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion . . .

How it works: The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations. When all 15 pendulums are started together, they quickly fall out of sync-their relative phases continuously change because of their different periods of oscillation. However, after 60 seconds they will all have executed an integral number of oscillations and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

Source.

[Lord of Fire]

^ That is freakin' awesome.

This is why I love science.

[AnimeFan188]

"#6. Tarantino Movies Are a Vast Interlocking Parallel Reality"

"#5. The Wire and The X-Files Exist in the Same Universe"

"#4. The Lone Ranger Is the Green Hornet's Uncle"

"#3. Conan the Barbarian and Cthulhu: Best Buds Forever?"

"#2. The Guy from Wolfenstein Is the Grandfather of the Kid From Commander Keen"

"#1. Daredevil and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Were Created in the Same Traffic Accident"


See:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19323...wing-ways.html

[Evil Rick]

Originally Posted by papermario13689

Perhaps this is referring to the rumour of Disney being cryogenically frozen underneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland?

I can say without doubt; this is fake.

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

I am inclined to think that it is actually a claim rather than something actual - according to the principles of equilibria in chemistry, there wouldn't be a way to remove all of it or it will change the taste of the cola itself.

Most likely it is a long-time PR stunt, under the category of "we, the big company, are against harmful chemicals which breed social ills". It helps bolster reputation and sells more cola.

Acording to wiki:

"To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a cocaine-free coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey."

so here is another fun fact:

in the USA, the Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant.

[MrTerrorist]

Avast, mateys: It turns out "pirate talk" is based on lies propagated by Disney

[MrTerrorist]

Queen References in Videogames

[ChainLegacy]

Originally Posted by Kylaran

More than half of the world's 6,000+ languages are expected to die out by the end of the 21st century, with some linguists speculating that two languages disappear every month. Language extinction occurs at a rate several times faster than species extinction.

Those of you who aren't native speakers of English, or who are bilingual native speakers of English, should think about your own heritage language and feel proud to speak it!

What about my ancestors... They've been trying to revive Gaelic for decades now with little success. Sometimes, people just can't be bothered analyzing the cultural and historical importance of these dying languages. And who can blame them? It's simply inconvenient to learn a dying tongue when you can just speak the predominant one.

Nonetheless, from a 'bigger picture' perspective it is indeed sad. With each dying language some degree of human history and culture is lost.

[MrTerrorist]

What’s so bad about sugar?

Myth: All sugars are the same.

Fact: Different sugars have different properties and degrees of sweetness.

Sugar comes in many forms. Common table sugar is sucrose, a disaccharide of glucose and fructose, each of which have different properties. Fructose is often called a "fruit sugar" as it is found in honey, berries, and vegetables. Glucose and galactose also accompany fructose as a naturally occurring sugar, however, these naturally occurring sugars are often forsaken for artificial sweeteners, which lack the caloric and other bodily advantages of naturally occurring sugars.

Fructose is considerably sweeter than other naturally-occurring sugars, with fructose being over 1.5 times as sweet as sucrose, over twice as sweet as glucose, and six times sweeter than galactose. Fructose also has a reasonably low manufacturing cost, leading it to be one of the main natural sweeteners used in manufacturing processes.

Myth: Sugar is bad and not a useful part of your diet.

Fact: You need glucose.

Glucose is used by as an energy source by almost every organism. Glucose is used by your body's cells as a very efficient energy source. For example, via the the Krebs Cycle, a single molecule of glucose yields a net gain of two molecules of ATP through anaerobic respiration, and 34 molecules of ATP through aerobic respiration.

Glucose is also a valuable precursor for several types of biological molecules; including lipids, amino acids, and cellulose, providing a valuable building block that can be readily used by almost any molecule. The synthesis of glucose was not able to be reproduced in vitro until the late 1800s, with Emil Fischer winning the 1902 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the synthesis of glucose and other naturally occurring sugars.

Myth: Sugar has little impact on humans other than acting as a sweetener.

Fact: Your brain runs on sugar.

You brain's main supply of energy is the monosaccharide glucose. While your brain only weighs between 3 to 5 pounds, it makes use of approximately 15-20% of your body's daily caloric needs. It has been long thought that the glucose was consumed as a function of cognitive experience, and research on rats shows that when a more cognitively challenging task is placed before them, more glucose is depleted. This phenomenon also appears to extend to humans.

In the journal article Glucose, memory, and aging, published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers observed that elderly patients who were given lemonade sweetened with glucose experienced a nearly two fold increase in short term memory when asked to recall a prose passage compared to those who drank lemonade sweetened with the artificial sweetener saccharin (also known by the brand name of "Sweet'N Low"). Additionally, saccharin has no calories.

Glucose has also been shown to have a large impact on self-control and behavior, with limited supplies causing a quick falloff in behavioral stability at times. I like to call this phenomenon "hanger", hungry-anger, when observed in friends and loved ones.

In Sum, Sugar is your Friend

So, sugar isn't all that bad, and honestly, if you want to perform a series of cognitively difficult tasks, you'll be depleting your resources quickly. Individuals with pre-existing conditions like diabetes need to watch their sugar intake, but for the individuals without such ailments, sugar is your friend, not your enemy.

[Kylaran]

Originally Posted by ChainLegacy

What about my ancestors... They've been trying to revive Gaelic for decades now with little success. Sometimes, people just can't be bothered analyzing the cultural and historical importance of these dying languages. And who can blame them? It's simply inconvenient to learn a dying tongue when you can just speak the predominant one.

Nonetheless, from a 'bigger picture' perspective it is indeed sad. With each dying language some degree of human history and culture is lost.

I once listened to an hour long podcast that taught basic Irish Gaelic. Don't remember a thing, unfortunately. Maybe some word that sounds remotely like "slongafall" as it might be read in English. Not sure what Gaelic language your parents speak, but that's pretty cool. I hope they don't give up.

Anyway, let me say this: I've studied Japanese for 6 years, but according to many people I have met, it is a useless language. Why? Because it's only spoken by a largely isolated and genetically related group of individuals centered around an island. But it's not a "dying" language in the same way that some Britonic/Gaelic languages are. The popularity in studying Japanese as a "useful" language steadily declines each year due to the stagnation of the country's economy; Japanese "power" was a 20th century phenomenon, and it's unsure whether it will continue into the future. In fact, I recently read an article by Nikkei (Nihon Keizai Shinbun) which hints at Japan's declining global competitiveness.

Compare this with, say, Chinese, which has a 5000 year tradition as a language. Furthermore, history argues that China rises and falls every few centuries, giving rise to repeatedly on the most powerful nations in the world. Mandarin, though limited to China alone, is spoken by hundreds of thousands of ethnically non-Han individuals.

What qualifies as "useful" is really subjective, because from a standpoint based on numbers Japanese would not be a very popular language to learn. Will it eventually die out? I don't know. This is an extreme hypothetical case. But at the same time, it's very interesting to think about what defines usefulness, and then realize that understanding old, seemingly irrelevant (and I emphasize the word seemingly) things are just not very well valued by a lot of people, be it for whatever reasons.

[AnimeFan188]

""Crowdsourcing" is one of those business buzzwords that actually represents
something very simple: letting crowds of strangers do your work for you. But it's not
just about convincing a bunch of bored people to do grunt work for free -- when you
see what the masses of untrained non-experts are capable of when they put their
heads together, it's almost magical."

See:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19431...n-experts.html


What other problems could best be solved by "crowdsourcing"?

[MrTerrorist]

What damage does alcohol do to our bodies?

[Hiroi Sekai]

Originally Posted by MrTerrorist

What damage does alcohol do to our bodies?

And this children, is why I'll never drink ever.


Another bunch from the next page of my facts binder; funny because a lot of these are food related and I've been home cooking a lot lately. XD

- Peeling a banana from the bottom will remove the stringy bits along with the peel. This is the method that primates use when eating bananas.

- Speaking of bananas, leaving a bunch together in their stems will cause them to ripen quicker.

- If you have an ant infestation, leave out a small pile of cornmeal. They'll carry it home, eat it, and then slowly die out because their bodies can't digest it.

- Keeping a dryer sheet in your pocket has been known to ward off a majority of mosquitoes.

- Upon buying any sort of frosting from a store, whip it in a mixer for just a few minutes. The frosting doubles in size and you get more than what you paid for.

- Adding a small teaspoon of water while frying ground beef will help remove a lot of the grease produced whilst cooking.

- Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are generally sweeter and should be used for plain eating. Ones with 4 bumps are firmer and would be serve better in cooked dishes.

[Jinto]

Vince Ebert a german cabaretist with his roots in physics shows an interesting experiment and uses it to explain the life style indivudality of people in the presence of markets.

Unfortunately the language is german. Additonally I cannot sync my translation to the video, because its not mine. But I hope you'll still like it.

Here is my translation of what he is saying:

So, also sie sehen und hören, die Metronome ticken wirklich unabhängig von einander - individuell.

Well, you can see and hear, that those metronomes really tick (think) differently from each other - individually.


Das ist natürlich jetzt kein reales Abbild von unserer Gesellschaft - wir sind zwar alle Individuen, wir sind aber trotzdem miteinander verbunden. Beim Konsumverhalten zum Beispiel über den Markt.

Of course that is not a real image of our society - we are individuals indeed, but we also interact with each other. For example via the market in the case of consumer behavior.


Und diesen Markteinfluss kann man sehr sehr schön mit Hilfe von dieser Schaukel hier demonstrieren. Da stell ich die Metronome jetzt einfach mal drauf. Und lass die Schaukel los.

Now, this swing here conveniently illustrates the influence of the market. I simply put all the metronomes on the swing and unhand it.


Jetzt denken diese Metronome immernoch: "Ich bin total individuell". Geben aber einen Teil ihrer Individualität an diese schaukel ab. Die fängt dadurch an leicht zu schwingen. Dadurch werden die langsamen Metronome ein bisschen beschleunigt und die schnelleren ein bisschen abgebremst.

Now, all metronomes are still thinking: "I am so individual". But they give off some individuality to the swing. This makes the swing oscilating lightly. Thereby, the slower metronomes will be accelerated a little bit and the faster ones will be slowed down a little bit.


Dadurch entwickelt sich... nach und nach... nach einiger Zeit... ohne äußeren Zwang... dauert noch ein bisschen... ein gemeinsamer Schwingungszustand.

This makes emerge... step by step... after a little while... without external force... will take a little longer... a collective oscillation state.

Nach und nach gehen die alle im Gleichschritt, und die merken das noch nicht mal. Und genauso ticken wir auch.......
After a while, they're all going in candence and do not even realize it. And thats our way of thinking......

[MrTerrorist]

10 Stubborn Food Myths That Just Won’t Die, Debunked by Science

[AnimeFan188]

"The next thing I'm going to say is going to make 80 percent of you want to punch
me in the face, so let's get it out of the way: For the past year or so, part of my job
has been to walk through library warehouses and destroy tens of thousands of
often old and irreplaceable books.

Book burning is something people usually associate with the Third Reich (the fact
that this is the second time this year I've been compared with Nazis on this website
probably speaks more about me than I would care to admit sober), a symbol of
intolerance and a hatred of intellectualism. But that's not why we're doing it. So, let
me take this chance to make a few things clear ..."

See:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19453...n-history.html

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by AnimeFan188

"The next thing I'm going to say is going to make 80 percent of you want to punch
me in the face, so let's get it out of the way: For the past year or so, part of my job
has been to walk through library warehouses and destroy tens of thousands of
often old and irreplaceable books.

Book burning is something people usually associate with the Third Reich (the fact
that this is the second time this year I've been compared with Nazis on this website
probably speaks more about me than I would care to admit sober), a symbol of
intolerance and a hatred of intellectualism. But that's not why we're doing it. So, let
me take this chance to make a few things clear ..."

See:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19453...n-history.html

This guy is right about what he said, even I read some books on a Kindle.
But I still have the urge to punch him in the face.

[Hiroi Sekai]

Originally Posted by AnimeFan188

"The next thing I'm going to say is going to make 80 percent of you want to punch
me in the face, so let's get it out of the way: For the past year or so, part of my job
has been to walk through library warehouses and destroy tens of thousands of
often old and irreplaceable books.

Book burning is something people usually associate with the Third Reich (the fact
that this is the second time this year I've been compared with Nazis on this website
probably speaks more about me than I would care to admit sober), a symbol of
intolerance and a hatred of intellectualism. But that's not why we're doing it. So, let
me take this chance to make a few things clear ..."

See:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19453...n-history.html

B...BAKAAAAAAA! No matter the reason, the creation of a hard copy book is an adventure. What the author put his time and mind into, and the long process that went into making that physical copy. The smell of the books and the feel of the pages; all of it's part of the experience! When you burn a book for any reason whatsoever, you're burning away a part of the writer and charring the innocent mindsets of classical readers directly onto an electronic-based society. I never liked e-Books and I don't think I ever will. I just don't feel like I understand the emotions the writer was going through when composing the story unless I have the actual copy in my hands.