Make Millions Of Coals Go In There.

[rionaleonhart]

A couple of nights ago, I dreamt that I was being strangled by a Furby. They don't even have arms!

Anyway, I have been musing on the wonders of the Internet. One of the things I like most about the Internet is the way you can learn all sorts of pointless trivia as you leap about from page to page.

Therefore, here is a pointless trivia entry! Tell

Comments

[missnoface]

Eleven out of the 12 men to have walked on the moon were in the Boy Scouts.

(I'm fiercely addicted to 'The QI Elves' on Twitter.)

[rionaleonhart]

It's going to be difficult to beat this fact.

[apiphile]

Today I learnt that the fearsome Angler fish is actually no longer than my thumb. And that Franz Magellen dropped a cannonball on a line from his ship, and when it failed to touch bottom after 700 feet, boldly declared that the ocean was bottomless.

[Today I have been to "The Deep" at the Natural History Museum, it was AWESOME, there were THINGS IN JARS and a BATHYSPHERE and a WHALE SKELETON]

Also, books are book-sized because of the size of the average sheep.

[dracothelizard]

Isn't that the male Angler fish who is tiny and the female one is bigger?

[apiphile]

The male is tiny, but the female is still only as long as my thumb. They had dead ones in jars. The male is absurdly tiny. In fact, so many of the deep-sea things that look monstrously terrifying are WEENY.

[The Fangtooth and the Pelican Eel, however, both need to be a lot smaller than they are to stop starring in my nightmares.]

[dracothelizard]

Damn ocean photographers making fish look bigger than they are.

Having looked up the Fangtooth, I am wondering why this young lady looks so calm.

[sashwizzled]

OhmyGod I love this stuff so much

- The maximum number of friends you can have at one time is 150 (= Dunbar's Number). This is because of the size of the brain's neocortex - any larger than this and social cohesion in groups breaks down.

- The livers of many polar animals contain toxic levels of vitamin A - an Antarctic explorer who resorted to eating his huskies died of this, and polar bear liver contains such high levels it will even make the dogs seriously ill.

- In 1940, human bones, the remains of an aircraft, and navigation equipment identical to the type used by Amelia Earhart's navigator were found on an island just off their flight path. Some of the bones are believed to be of a woman the same height as Earhart. Officially, however, it's not her. Honest.

Linguistics - language acquisition (could get a bit long ^_^;; )

[hikari_datenshi]

Oooh minims! I approve, maan. I approve~

Some basic things for my fact: a pidgin is a simplified language that's made up where two parties of people do not have one in common. They're mostly used for trading, etc.
A creole is when second-generation speakers of a pidgin grammaticalise and add rules and semantic shifts, as well as new vocabulary to it. It becomes a language in and of itself

Re: Linguistics - language acquisition (could get a bit long ^_^;; )

[rionaleonhart]

Feel free to continue if you want! I've already studied theories of language acquisition, but others might be interested. (And should be interested; language acquisition is fascinating.)

I'd heard the Nicaraguan sign-language pidgin story before, but the full significance of it hadn't occurred to me: this isn't a normal pidgin, formed by people who have native languages of their own but no common means of communication, but a language developed by people who haven't had any language exposure at all. That's incredible.

Re: Linguistics - language acquisition (could get a bit long ^_^;; )

[hikari_datenshi]

I know, right? It's why I find it so fascinating! I love telling people about it, hehe. We studied ISN and the creation of it in my Language Origins and Acquisition module in second year and I absolutely loved it.

I can just imagine all the linguists going into paroxysms of delight when it surfaced - I bet they loved it! Something else to argue about! Hurrah! I love how vehement the acquisition linguists are about their various theories.

Re: Linguistics - language acquisition (could get a bit long ^_^;; )

[sashwizzled]

Wow, that is seriously amazing. I wish I could have learned more about this stuff at university, it's so frickin' interesting.

If you want to continue, I totally wouldn't mind. >_>

[yumiboo]

Wow, that is a dream. I had an odd dream where I was chased around some weird video-game-esque dungeon by a weird blob thing.

Anyway, I don't know many useless facts (most of the stuff that I know is psych-based, and it might be uninteresting/a bit dorkish of me), but here are some ones I didn't know:

- all polar bears are left-handed
- Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors
- Walt Disney was afraid of mice. Apparently.
- If a month starts with Sunday, the 13th of that month will always be a Friday.
- 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321.

[rionaleonhart]

Don't worry about being dorkish! Part of the idea behind this entry is that people might learn things in areas they wouldn't otherwise study.

I sort of love that blood donor fact.

[yumiboo]

Hehe, I know, it's a darling little stipulation. Although, knowing my luck, it'l turn out to be wrong :(

[dracothelizard]

Do share the psych-based ones!