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Did You Know..?

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Quantum

13:29 / 08.08.06

Did you know Spam, the annoying email phenomenon, is named after the Monty Python Spam Song?

Share your momentary but waning amazement at something! Small fun facts to recite at parties! Annoy your colleagues! Infuriate your friends!

Lama glama

13:33 / 08.08.06

Here's a favourite that works a treat with casual fans of Doctor Who:

Did you know that fourth Doctor companion, Lalla Ward (Romana 2) after divorcing fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker, eventually married famed biologist Richard Dawkins?

Amayzing!

Triplets

15:06 / 08.08.06

If put two (or more!) sea sponges in a blender then proceed to pureé the bastards back to the stone age over time the bits of sea sponge will ooze, T-1000 style, back into their original happy sponge shapes.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:26 / 08.08.06

Triplets, that may be the coolest thing I've ever read.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:39 / 08.08.06

Yeah, but imagine how you'd feel if yours were the sea sponges that bucked the trend...

Mistoffelees

16:47 / 08.08.06

There are nine million bicycles in Beijing´...

Dead Megatron

18:15 / 08.08.06

Triplets, that may be the coolest thing I've ever read.

Invertebrate biology is ful of cool things such as this.

If you rip apart a starfish arm that comes off with a small piece of the central body, not only will the starfish regenerate a new arm, the arm will also regenerate a new starfish...

If you decapitate a cocroach, it will continue to function for several hours (enough to lay a last egg batch), thanks to a "spare brain" they have on their torso...

A butterfly catterpilar is actually a regression to a more primitive form of insect that existed hundreds of millions of years ago. So, when you see a catterpilar, you see how the world was before the dinosaurs rule (and then the catterpillar turns into a butterfly for a day or so, have sex, lay eggs, and die)...

Octopussies are as smart as dogs, but a lot harder to pet...

Krakens eat pirates in the Caribbean quite often (ok, this one is ajoke!!1!)

Spaniel

18:16 / 08.08.06

Triplets so wins.

I need to think of something to post here.

imaginary mice

18:21 / 08.08.06

Quantum

18:36 / 08.08.06

If you added together the people in New York and LA metropolitan areas they would outnumber all UK men put together.
(There are five USA citizens for every UK citizen.)

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

19:10 / 08.08.06

That would explain why I have a hard time finding a UK man to date in the States.

Dead Megatron

19:21 / 08.08.06

Not to mention most UK citizens are actually in UK...

US, UK, all those countries with acronyms for names... so confusing.

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:25 / 08.08.06

If it helps, DM, I am regularly bamboozled about whether it's "Brazil", "Brasil" or both...

Mistoffelees

19:35 / 08.08.06

Or maybe it´s Basil?

But that might be faulty.

Happy Dave Has Left

19:35 / 08.08.06

A human hair can hold up to 3KG in weight before snapping.

Also, there are more Barbie dolls in the world than Canadians.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

19:36 / 08.08.06

I don't find US, UK confusing....I just look for the expats.

More Barbie dolls than Canadians??? That has to be wrong...

Phex: Dorset Doom

20:44 / 08.08.06

More INCREDIBLE INSECT FACTS!:

Together Ants and Termites account for 30% of the world's fauna's biomass!

It is estimated that there are approximately 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive!

An aphid can produce 50 babies in one week that will mature in another week. In one season, a single cabbage aphid and its young, if none died, could produce 1,560,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 heptillion, 560 hexillion) individuals under ideal conditions. One hectare of vegetation can feed 5 million aphids under ideal conditions!

A female Praying Mantis bites off her mate's head prior to mating, allowing the much smaller brain in it's penis to take control!

iamus

21:28 / 08.08.06

*sigh*

Been there.

paranoidwriter waves hello

21:40 / 08.08.06

Have you lot been watching Q.I with Stephen Fry or something?

Here's one for ya that almost shattered my heart the other night when a friend told me:

For a time during the 1970s, Patrick Moore was the Chairman of the anti-immigration United Country Party.

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

21:40 / 08.08.06

Gold is such a ductile metal that theoretically a single ounce can be stretched into a cord 18 miles long!

Mourne Kransky

21:49 / 08.08.06

Badgers, wolves, bears and lobsters are left-handed (or pawed, or clawed).

paranoidwriter waves hello

22:07 / 08.08.06

Male cats have barbed penises.

Mistoffelees

22:18 / 08.08.06

And female and male cats alike have barbed tongues. Hmmmm...

Dead Megatron

22:28 / 08.08.06

If it helps, DM, I am regularly bamboozled about whether it's "Brazil", "Brasil" or both...

Actually, Brazil is Brasil's evil twin from the antimatter universe of Qward(true fact). I'm not entirely sure from which one I came, though...

astrojax69

23:22 / 08.08.06

if you lay all the world's economists end to end they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.

paranoidwriter waves hello

01:15 / 09.08.06

Many years ago, I remember reading an article in the wonderful but now extinct "Spirit" magazine about how the Information Age had promised us more leisure time but has in fact increased our workload (i.e. we now do far more in less time); a kind of modern extension of Bertrand Russell's 'In Praise of Idleness".

Anyhoo, one of the statistics the author gave was that if all the money in the world were converted into dollars and separated equally amongst every member of the human race, we'd each be a millionaire. Now, I'm not quite sure how to check that (i.e. anyone know how to find out how much money there currently is in the world?), and I imagine population has grown a lot since I read it, but still...

sorenson

02:10 / 09.08.06

the Information Age had promised us more leisure time but has in fact increased our workload (i.e. we now do far more in less time)

That's because governments are obsessed with increasing productivity (ie making us all work harder) as a way of supposedly increasing the amount of money they have (ie GDP). It's a mad merry-go-round of endless, pointless 'growth'!

Janean Patience

08:34 / 09.08.06

Did you know of the men who've played James Bond? Sean Connery Roger Moore Pierce Brosnan yeah, Timothy Dalton George Lazenby Daniel Craig and David Niven.

Bet ya didn't know that Blockbusters' Bob Holness was one of that select crowd. He played the suave super-spy in a South African radio adaptation of Moonraker.

Next week: How Going For Gold's Henry Kelly lost out to Christopher Reeve for Superman.

Dead Megatron

08:40 / 09.08.06

The DNA strand is so long that, if you could stretch a single chromosome in a straight line, the molecule would be a little over 4 feet long...

Mistoffelees

08:41 / 09.08.06

I disagree. This growth is not meaningless. At least for my country, the cliché of "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer" is not true.

The European Union defines being poor as having an income of 60 % of the average income or less. Since wages are increasing over the years, so does the income of those who are poor.

About ten years ago, the income of the poor in Germany crossed the income of the average salary in 1969 and it has slowly been climbing ever since.

More or less, it is not "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer", but "the rich get more rich much faster than the income of the poor is increasing".

Janean Patience

08:53 / 09.08.06

it is not "the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer", but "the rich get more rich much faster than the income of the poor is increasing".

That's totally gonna ruin Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows.

"Everybody knows the deal is fixed,
The income of the poor is steadily increasing though at a lesser rate of acceleration than the income of the rich,
That's how it goes,
and Everybody Knows."

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:02 / 09.08.06

You may say that I've grown bitter,
But of this you may be sure,
Consumer spending drives inflation
To the detriment of the poor.

Whisky Priestess

09:54 / 09.08.06

Keeps them on their toes
Everybody knows ...

Also, there are more Barbie dolls in the world than Canadians.

Ah, but the Canadians are better dressed. Marginally.

What a beautiful fact, though.

Evil Scientist

11:45 / 09.08.06

Actually, Brazil is Brasil's evil twin from the antimatter universe of Qward(true fact). I'm not entirely sure from which one I came, though...

Simple way to find that out, which colour do you prefer? Green or yellow?

Evil Scientist

11:54 / 09.08.06

The Mandarin word for four sounds very similar to the Mandarin word for death, which is why it's considered an unlucky number.

In China a party of four at a restaurant will be referred to as "three and one".

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