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Learn something new every day.

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

03:22 / 10.11.02

Prompted by Flyboys statement that he once learnt something new every day on this site, I thought I would start a thread that would give everyone something new to learn. Every day.

To get the ball rolling here’s some advice on the prevention of piles (haemorrhoids for posh folk):

Never sit for more than 4 minuets on the toilet (this is easy for me to say, I’m a sit down, get the job over with kind of fellow. However my mate Rob will happily sit on the bog (reading the News of the World) for a good half hour. Are you one of these people? If so you're on a crash course for anal disaster.)

Get plenty of fibre in your diet, and water (whether this counteracts the above statement, I don’t know. Maybe an extra serving of beans will give you 10 more minutes on the bog? I don’t know, but is it worth the risk?)

This is all on the Piles front, but don’t be afraid to ask your local chemist for suppositories, this condition is more common than people like to admit.

So, if you have any other useful facts for us (not just Flyboy) to learn, then please post them here.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:43 / 10.11.02

I told you how to fuck up giant spiders! What more do you want, eh? Eh? What more do you want?

08:49 / 10.11.02

it takes that long to read the news of the world?

ok, I learned something.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:35 / 10.11.02

Well done, Panarchy: with your wise words on the prevention of piles, you've completely dispelled me of the belief that the standard of discussion on Barbelith has never been lower. Completely.

12:30 / 11.11.02

The contents of the breakfast bar at work are usually, I think it was 25c an ounce. But if you just get some cream cheese for your bagel and put it in a small bowl, it's free. I discovered that this morning.

This might be considered quite specialist knowledge, but the pay off is considerable, which I think is a good reason it needs to be said. Say you take two ounces of cream cheese every morning. That's about $125 over the course of the year that you would otherwise have spent uselessly. And, given that the bowls are not all that small, you could get more cheese than that. You could eat it throughout the day, or take it home to give to the cat.

This weekend I also learnt that Kazuo Ishiguro is a really nice guy (though you'll have to ask gridley for the details of this) and that Starship Troopers is not exactly the intelligent political novel it's sometimes made out to be, unless you don't really read newspapers or anything but hack sci fi. I've been on a bit of a learning bender this weekend.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:36 / 11.11.02

The puffin is traditionally known as "the sea parrot". (TRUE)

I think it's to do with the colourful beak, but that's just speculation.

13:05 / 11.11.02

That's fine, Chairman, but where does that leave the Parrotfish, eh?

13:23 / 11.11.02

From American History class last week:

"In the Southern US, the ideology of slavery was based on race. This defense didn't really work since there were 250,000 free blacks in the south at this time. Also, 3700 blacks were plantation owners with slaves of their own..." (That last bit was something of a shock to me)

From Canadian History last week:

"Even the Catholic Church didn't care for the Irish immigrants in the Ottawa valley. Of the 4 priests that were sent to the Irish community in the 1830's: 1 was an opium addict, 1 was insane, 1 was a heretic who delcared himself to be an angel, and 1 was thrown out of town for immoral dealings with a female parishoner"

Whisky Priestess

14:38 / 11.11.02

"Crible de balles" is French for "riddled with bullets". Something which may come in useful one day for some of you, in a rather bizarre set of circumstances.

14:41 / 11.11.02

If you're fed up of paying premium prices for textured vegetable protein and want to make your own, it couldn't be simpler:

Textured vegetable protein (TVP) is basically defatted soya flour which
has been processed and dried to give a substance with a sponge-like
texture which may be flavoured to resemble meat. Soya beans are dehulled and their oil extracted before being ground into flour. This flour is then mixed with water to remove soluble carbohydrate and the residue is textured by either spinning or extrusion. Extrusion involves passing heated soya residue from a high pressure area to a reduced pressure area through a nozzle resulting in the soya protein expanding. The soya protein is then dehydrated and may be either cut into small chunks or ground into granules.

15:49 / 11.11.02

Mm. Sounds delicious. Bleh.

To estimate the actual road distance between two towns in Sweden, take the straight-line distance and multiply by 1.2. They have fairly straight roads, reportedly, so it may work for the US too but you'd need to adjust the factor for the UK.

the garden gnome

17:54 / 11.11.02

getting ones credit history in the U.S. doesn't necessarily mean a bad notch will appear on said documentation, merely that the report will contain how many inquiries have been made.

lesson learned, don't try to apply for credit at a half dozen places then try to purchase a house within the year.......bad juju

18:47 / 11.11.02

'Champs Elysees' is Franglaish for 'Elysian Fields'. Wouldn't it have been lovely if the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens of Olde London were still around?

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:13 / 11.11.02

Dieter Brummer, erstwhile Australian soapie star and sometime heartthrob, now cleans the windows at my work. Fact.