Also A Fact: You Are My Favourite Person Right Now.
!!!
Dear whoever just anonymously bought me paid time: who are you? You are the best, that's who you are. Thank you so much! ♥!
I'd like to do something in return, but obviously as I don't know who you are I don't know what you'd like. What I've decided to do, therefore, is make a new Entry of Interesting Things ( here is the one from last year, where I learnt, amongst other things, that eleven of the twelve men who've walked on the moon were in the Boy Scouts and it's legal to duel in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors). If people contribute, there should be something to interest you, kind anonymous person, and with any luck there should be things to interest everyone else as well.
Therefore!
Tell us something interesting in the comments of this entry. Multiple interesting things are, of course, more than welcome! And then you can read the other comments and learn new things and, assuming you like learning, it will be great.
Some starting facts for you:
- The 'lb' abbreviation for the pound stands for libra, which is Latin for 'scales' (as in the measuring device, hence the name of the astrological sign) and the name of an ancient Roman unit of mass, roughly three quarters of the modern pound.
- The shape of the ampersand (&) derives from that of the word 'et', Latin for 'and' (Wikipedia, that great fount of accuracy, has a visual comparison of ampersands through the ages).
- I don't have the book from which I learnt this with me (The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely), so I'm afraid I can't tell you who actually performed this study, but here it is: if you place a rat in a box with a food-dispensing lever and then introduce a bowl of food, the rat won't just eat from the bowl, even though that takes less effort; at some point it'll go back to press the lever. Animals like to work for their food. This held true for every animal tested except cats, who cannot be bothered with that 'effort' business.
- From Kevin Dutton's Flipnosis: an experiment held by George Bizer at New York's Union College required participants to read mocked-up news reports about two fictitious political candidates, Rick and Chris, on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Half the participants had to choose between the statements 'I support Rick' and 'I oppose Rick', the other half between 'I support Chris' and 'I oppose Chris'. The groups then read a news report criticising their chosen candidate; let's take Chris as the example. The people who said 'I oppose Rick' were less likely to change their stance than the people who said 'I support Chris'. They were more reluctant to change their views purely because of the language in which they had been made to express those views. I think that's really interesting.
Any fields are welcome, from mathematics to linguistics to psychology to history to obscure references in videogames. Directing other people to this entry so we can get a wider pool of knowledge would get a hearty thumbs-up but is absolutely not compulsory. Let education commence!
Dear whoever just anonymously bought me paid time: who are you? You are the best, that's who you are. Thank you so much! ♥!
I'd like to do something in return, but obviously as I don't know who you are I don't know what you'd like. What I've decided to do, therefore, is make a new Entry of Interesting Things ( here is the one from last year, where I learnt, amongst other things, that eleven of the twelve men who've walked on the moon were in the Boy Scouts and it's legal to duel in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors). If people contribute, there should be something to interest you, kind anonymous person, and with any luck there should be things to interest everyone else as well.
Therefore!
Tell us something interesting in the comments of this entry. Multiple interesting things are, of course, more than welcome! And then you can read the other comments and learn new things and, assuming you like learning, it will be great.
Some starting facts for you:
- The 'lb' abbreviation for the pound stands for libra, which is Latin for 'scales' (as in the measuring device, hence the name of the astrological sign) and the name of an ancient Roman unit of mass, roughly three quarters of the modern pound.
- The shape of the ampersand (&) derives from that of the word 'et', Latin for 'and' (Wikipedia, that great fount of accuracy, has a visual comparison of ampersands through the ages).
- I don't have the book from which I learnt this with me (The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely), so I'm afraid I can't tell you who actually performed this study, but here it is: if you place a rat in a box with a food-dispensing lever and then introduce a bowl of food, the rat won't just eat from the bowl, even though that takes less effort; at some point it'll go back to press the lever. Animals like to work for their food. This held true for every animal tested except cats, who cannot be bothered with that 'effort' business.
- From Kevin Dutton's Flipnosis: an experiment held by George Bizer at New York's Union College required participants to read mocked-up news reports about two fictitious political candidates, Rick and Chris, on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Half the participants had to choose between the statements 'I support Rick' and 'I oppose Rick', the other half between 'I support Chris' and 'I oppose Chris'. The groups then read a news report criticising their chosen candidate; let's take Chris as the example. The people who said 'I oppose Rick' were less likely to change their stance than the people who said 'I support Chris'. They were more reluctant to change their views purely because of the language in which they had been made to express those views. I think that's really interesting.
Any fields are welcome, from mathematics to linguistics to psychology to history to obscure references in videogames. Directing other people to this entry so we can get a wider pool of knowledge would get a hearty thumbs-up but is absolutely not compulsory. Let education commence!