(Extremely crazy question) Care to share some useless facts?

I have to trim my toenails with wire cutters.

Here you are @Brian1946. I’ve been waiting for you.

How well you know my love of insanely useless info!

Is it true water in a toilet bowl swirls in the opposite directions in the Northern and Southern hemispheres? If that isn’t a useless fact I don’t know what is.

Horseshoe crabs are found only on the East coasts of North America and Asia.

The whining crabs can be found in every corner of the world which posesses a population. (ha!)

Up until 1970 all Chrysler vehicles had Right handed threads on right side wheels and Left handed threads on left side wheels. It was suppose to stop the lug nuts from loosening. Driver’s side lug nuts were marked with a “L”.

@Tropical_Willie, I’ve seen some! Years ago I was changing a tire and noticed, “L“s. I wondered what it was for.

@Tropical_Willie So “L” only stands for “left”? Useless letter!

Every time we urinate a small amount of urine is excreted in our saliva. Piss for breath. lol

A fart, when carefully ignited, can produce a green flame.

@Mimishu1995, cool avatar! Nice gun.

@Jonesn4burgers Heh. I’m officially a Fluther mafioso now!

May as well consider it my useless fact today :)

When I lived in a higher altitude, I was very frustrated with how tough all my meat seemed to be. I was accustomed to cooking in lower altitudes. Hamburger was a big hurdle.. No matter what I did, it was dense, and tough. I don’t know how the idea came to me, but I tried rice. I cooked the rice tender, then added it to the uncooked ground beef. It worked great! The flavor was unaffected, and my burgers came out tender and juicy every time. I made my own meatballs for spaghetti, and it worked perfectly for that too. My meatloaf has new appeal.

The movie quote “Are you talkin’ to me? I’m the only one here!” is often attributed to “Taxi Driver”, but the character in the film is actually quoting the film “Shane”.

There were Irish missionaries in Viking lands before Vikings knew Ireland existed.

In the movie Pet Sematary, 16 different cats were used for the part of Church, the Creeds’ family cat.

Also, Zelda, Rachel’s bed ridden sister, is played by a man.

@Jonesn4burgers That’s totally not a useless fact.

Here’s one: a “jiffy” is a real measurement of time, for 1/100th of a second.

Here’s another – “Satyricon”, the first novel-length work of fiction, was written by a Roman in about 60CE and it was a story about a werewolf.

Only in this thread can one be accused of posting a useful fact. ;-)

A useless fact for you; this question might teeter on the brink of not being a Flutherable question if one hold to the highbrow guidelines; point three specifically,

• Promote good discourse.

If the question doesn’t promote anything, from what I am told, it is not a real question. Just a fact I am passing on, not to say this is not a question worth asking, that is quitter ambiguous based off the guidelines.

Uhhhhh, I read the WHOLE post, including the part which says “helpful or not!”
@downtide, thankyou for finding my tidbit useful. I find yours interesting. I have a set of measuring spoons which are marked “dash”, “pinch”, and the like. Now I know one measurement I hear frequently is actually a standard.

Mr. Rodgers was an ordained minister.

An ostriches eye is bigger than it’s brain.

Shakespeare invented my favorite word: Assassin. And Bump.

Bulgarians eat the most yogurt.

The first Earth Day in 1970 was created by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin after he witnessed a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, the previous year.

A couple in Toronto had a fight over who was the prettiest actress on “Married With Children” and the wife slashed her husband in the crotch with a broken wine bottle. They kissed at made up, but then got into the same argument. She broke his arm, and he stabbed her repeatedly :D

@AshLeigh “Shakespeare invented my favorite word: Assassin. And Bump.” That’s an answer to a question on my English Lit test, so thanks! ;-p

In larger rooms time passes more slowly.

The space in front of the webbing between your index finger and thumb is called a thenar space.

I always thought it was funny, in anatomy class, that there was not just a term for every body part, but also a term for the spaces in between body parts.

@Yetanotheruser The flames are blue.

The southern Appalachian mountains is a temperate rainforest.

In ancient Germany, mutilating a tree was punishable by death.

Mr. Rogers has a son who is famous. Dee Snider, of Twisted Sister is the son of Mr. Rogers.

^ ^ ^ ^ Not true ^ ^ ^ ^ @Jonesn4burgers

The capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou (wah-guh-doo-goo).
@flutherother Huh? Care to explain?

Equal parts of Clorox, Simple Green and Zep Calcium, Lime and Rust Remover makes for a very unpleasant surprise for the neighborhood.

And Vinegar + Hydrogen Peroxide = Peracetic Acid

@dxs I have a Burkina Faso hand drum, made from a giant gourd with a goatskin skin it rocks. :-)

Butterflies taste with their feet and waterfowl poop, on average, every 8 minutes.

@Tropical_Willie, true true and true. I have him recorded when he appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He said so himself. You callin’ Mr. Rogers a liar?

@Jonesn4burgers Hmmm…well, I looked it up on Wikipedia and it says that Dee Sniders dad is named “Bob” and he is a retired state trooper from like New Jersey or something.

No known pathogens can survive in full strength beer.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Well then, I shall go to bed healthy and happy, cheers, this cerveza is for you! lol

Urine is a sterile fluid, unless passing through an infected bladder/urethra.

@Hypocrisy_Central TOO USELESS TO BE ACCEPTED! ~

Right. Now’s my turn.
– One reason for some people to attend cosmetic surgery is not that they want a beautiful body, but that they hope it will bring them luck.
– The moon is smaller than the Earth.
– 昭雄ぽせあぇいおあｌじゃそ is just random Japanese.
– Mafioso = Man of Honour = Mafia member.
– Some people are allergic to peanut :(
– It’s easier to sleep at night when you hold a textbook in your hand while in bed :D
– Some people cheat in tests because they see that other students do so.
– If you eat too much, you will be fat.
– Some people get mad when you treat them the way they treat you :(
– People tend to reveal their real personal information on Facebook.
– Also on Facebook: it’s becoming harder to hide your true identity, mostly because photos featuring you get tagged to you by your friends.
– A person who watch TV too much is called “couch potato”.

The Latin words for right and left are dextro and sinistro. When you call someone ambidextrous you are saying they have two right hands. Dexterous and come to mean using a precise skill with your hand, while sinister is well….

Cats can not taste sweet things but can taste ATP

Sweat glands are only found on a cats paws.

@dabbler I once camped on a beach during a horseshoe crab spawn. It was pretty awesome to watch. Horseshoe crabs extending off in to either direction as far as you could see.

If you squeeze a piece of orange peel and hold a match to it you get a flame, not sure what colour, it’s been a long time since I did that. Inspired by @Yetanotheruser.

Grapes do some amazing stuff in a microwave.

Coloma has a teal colored super soft blanket on her bed with a siamese cat sleeping on it. lol

North America experiences more natural disasters per year than any other continent.

@Tropical_Willie, @Coloma I stand corrected. I can’t imagine why Fred Rogers would claim such a thing, but he did, and never indicated or claimed to have been joking! Dee’s real name is Daniel, and his dad was a New Yorkk trooper. His mom was Catholic, his dad Jewish, but they joined an Episcopalian church when his mom switched. Just guessing, his dad must have stayed Jewish.
I did learn a couple of cute things he has in common with Fred Rogers; they both appeared before the senate regarding the entertainment, and recordings, Fred was a minister, Dee sang in his church’s choir. They both wrote music, though Dee is more known for it than Fred.
One more tidbit, Michael Keaton worked on the shoe Mister Roger’s Neighborhood for a few years before moving on with his career in acting.
All these years I believed that, because I never would have suspected Mr. Rogers of a falsehood.

@Coloma Mimishu1995 was officially made a mafioso a few day ago and is now terrorizing Dr. Jelly. BLAM BLAM!

Talk about useless personal facts…

@Bluefreedom Are you sure you experience more hurricanes than I do typhoons?

Hitler was a vegetarian.

Male bats have the highest rates of homosexuality of any mammal.

In Japan watermelons are grown squared. They’re easier to stack that way.

@GloPro, they also cost about 600 bucks each there!

@GloPro Also in Japan: there are two words for a watermelon: スイカ and メロン.

Unfortunately, that has been proven wrong by Google :/

Hey! Gun toting mama! We seem to be knowing lots about watermelon! I had some started growing in pots. Yesterday I put them in the soil outside. My daughter wants to make one rectangle just to see if she can. She heard them talking about it during the winter olympics, and thought it was pretty cool.
Just one question, where do I buy rectangle watermelon seeds? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

@Jonesn4burgers Gun toting mama

Are you talking about me?

You’re the only woman with a gun I can see just now, haha!

@GloPro They also grow a variety of other shapes including creepy face

Sometimes I just crack myself up!

@Jonesn4burgers where do I buy rectangle watermelon seeds? At the “Big Box” store!!! HAHAHAHAHHAA!

You can use Fritos as candles during a blackout.

All of the ingredients to make tnt are still available at your local walmart.

@Seek WTF! Really? lololol

Dust mites live on our eyelashes, we are swarming with micro-parasites, inside and out.

That would be gunpowder not tnt

@Coloma Ew. Thanks for the creepy reminder. I’ve already showered three times today.

Speaking of natural disasters, the UK experiences more earthquakes in an average year than does California. They’re just very very little ones.

It’s a long way to Tipperary.

^^^ LOL

@GloPro So I guess you’re not into swallowing tapeworms for weight control? haha

www.tapewormeggs.com

@Coloma or curing Crohns

@ARE_you_kidding_me Wow…pretty cool.

@Coloma Are you calling me fat? I guess if it’s a choice of never eating cupcakes again and swallowing a worm I would channel How to Eat Fried Worms or pretend to audition for Fear Factor. Don’t take my cupcakes.

The average housefly hums in F.

In Erwin, Tennessee, on September 13, 1919 they hung an elephant for killing a keeper.

In 1963, the courts of Tripoli sentenced 75 convicted banknote smugglers to death at one time. They were all pigeons.

Coloma just are 37 jelly beans. Bleh…help me.

@Mimishu1995. Not sure about that exactly but the numbers are derived from a conglomeration of events including hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and any other criteria meeting a natural disaster.

The 60 hz hum from some electrical appliances (in the US and some of Asia) is a slightly flat B (or a very sharp Bb).

@Yetanotheruser The dial tone of a landline phone is “F”

According to @28lorelei….............................a housefly hums an “F”
According to @ARE_you_kidding_me….......a dialtone sounds an “F”

Therefore: There is a housefly in every landline telephone?

Buzzy logic!

Coloma is looking extremely glamorous this morning.
Black socks, pink flowered jammy bottoms, pink shirt and funky white bathrobe with crazy bed head hair. Quick…look away or you shall turn into a pillar of salt. lololol

Bed hair is awesome.

Speaking of pitch, the sun’s vibrations emit a pitch of Bb. A really low Bb.

The “Conversation” in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” actually occurs twice in the movie, in two different keys.

Abraham Lincoln created the Secret Service on the day he was shot

To all of you this is useless, but…YAY..we had over an inch of rain today in the drought zone here!

Turkey Vultures vomit to repel predators and defecate on their legs to cool down in hot weather via evaporation.

It’s snowed a few inches here. A little late in the season to play in it, but I’ll take it.

@GloPro Yeah..it’s snowing just up the hill from me now in Pollock Pines.

No snow here for me- it’s raining today here…
G and B is a pretty common interval for car horns.

The @Mimishu1995‘s Mafia promotion isn’t going very well…

Bang bang you’re dead! lol

…or IS she dead? Maybe @Mimishu1995 had to fake her death and enter the witness protection program. Who will she become next?

Henry Fonda, Richard Burton and Robert Shaw (Jaws) were drinking buddies.

Robert Shaw was a Shakespearean actor trained by Gielgud, but you’d never know if you only saw him in Jaws.

@Coloma it seems that you have just shot another man of honour.

I’ll take my revenge! No one is allowed to kill men of honour, ever! ~

@Mimishu1995 Please godfather, don’t kill my little green duck.

Bang bang! she shot her down, bang bang! that awful sound, bang bang! she hit the ground…

Hmm… there was also a fairly prominent choral director named Robert Shaw… interestingly enough he worked a lot with the choral director at my school.

The human head weighs, on average 13lbs.
My theory is that since the head is, technically not a part of the body, one can deduct 13 lbs. from the scale when weighing themselves. lol

Fusako Kitashirakawa, formerly Princess Kane (1–28-1890 – 8–11-1974), was the eleventh child and seventh daughter of Emperor Meiji of Japan and one of his consorts, Lady Sachiko.

Some things I’ve run across in the past year:

In the film Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), the down and out Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) throws a glass of water into the face of a persistent, young street urchin trying to sell him a lottery ticket. It doesn’t even phase the kid and he finally gets Dobbs to fork over his last 20 centavos for a chance to win. That little Mexican boy was played by Robert Blake. Two decades later, Blake played the Cutter Family murderer Perry Smith in the film In Cold Blood. During a series of death row interviews, the real life Perry Smith told In Cold Blood author Truman Capote that his all-time favorite movie was Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler’s mother was burned as a witch.

It was the Dominicans, the order of priests, nuns, and lay people who managed the prosecution, execution, and may take the overall responsibility for the Spanish Inquisition—and not the Jesuits as many people assume.

The young Dominican priest, Tomás de Torquemada, met and became the confidant of the teenage Isabella, princess—and later queen—of Castille, and was her life-long confessor and mentor. He strongly promoted and lobbied for her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon and with the combined strength of these two kingdoms were able to finally take back the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors and became the royal rulers of the country that we now know as Spain. It was at Torquemeda’s insistence that Spain be rid of all non-Catholics—all potential fifth columnists—and that he would take care of the problem himself if given the army and his Order the authority and proper budget. Convinced that this was their Catholic duty to their god in return for the Catholic victory, this resulted in the Alhambra Decree which kicked the Inquisition into high gear and allowed Torquemada to commit the cruelties he is today known for.

According to their own letters and diaries and those of members of the court and diplomatic service of the time, the discoveries of gold in the New World under the Spanish flag were interpreted as confirmation by Ferdinand and Isabella that God approved of the Inquisition and wanted it to continue world-wide.

Torquemada’s great grandmother was a conversa (a person who had converted from Judaism to Christianity) and this might explain his rabid prosecution of the Spanish Inquisition.

Castellano, or Castilian Spanish, the equivalent of the Queen’s English in the UK, is spoken with a lisp and, although the official version of espanol of Spain, is considered effeminate in most of Spain’s former American colonies. The lore behind this relates that the King of Castile was born with a lisp and rather than train it away, made it law that from that time on all Spanish was to be spoken that way—with a lisp. It’s a great story, and I’ve heard this from many native Spanish speakers, but I’m unable to confirm it. I would be grateful to anyone here that can confirm it with impeccable citations.

The Jesuit Order, unlike all the others, does not answer directly to the Pope. They answer to one of their own elected leaders, the Superior General. The Superior General and the Pope haven’t always seen eye to eye and this has led to persecutions and excommunications in the past.

Swiss Jesuit Professor Hans Küng, president of the Foundation for a Global Ethic, and the top theologian of the Catholic Church, is no longer allowed to lecture in Cathollic institutions because he was banned to doing so by the last pope, Benedict, for writing a paper questioning the infallibility of the Pope.

Hans Küng and Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict, were friends and roommates at the Gregorian University while studying for their advanced degrees in the 1950’s. Both had liberal views until the the spring of 1968, the sudden eruption of left-wing radicalism in the West known as the “Prague Spring.” By this time both were heads of universities in Europe. Joe took a determinedly conservative stance and Hans the liberal. Riots were much more violent at Joe’s school after he inaugurated more stringent policies on speech and movement on campus, but this didn’t deter him from becoming one of the most conservative popes of the last two centuries.

Pope Benedict was replaced by Pope Francis, the first Jesuit to ever be elected pope.

(I’ve never been that much of a Catholic Church history buff, but after having a Jesuit on board for a couple of weeks last year —playing poker with a tarot deck, sipping malt, telling stories, and generally just shooting the shit—he, and the church’s history, gained my esteem and interest respectively. This was months before the election of the Jesuit pope, which surprised my friend to no end. He also was a good hand on deck, although he rivals me in years. As a man he is a good one, he is steady under stress and tells an interesting story. In our late night conversations he described many of the internal battles within the Church along with a little church history. He is a great proponent of liberal Jesuit Hans Kung, and Liberation Theology, and he practices what he preaches. He never proselytized although he knew I’d not been observant since high school and that god as he knows him plays no part in my life. We were just two guys out of Santa Cruz, Cuba headed for Montserrat under sail with some stories to share during the doldrums. I’ll be picking him up soon and taking him to Dominica for his annual vacation. I’ll look forward to having him on board again.)

Although it makes very little practical difference to the US government or it‘s citizens, there is no law that actually prevents United States nationals from visiting Cuba. However, it is illegal for US citizens to spend US weath in Cuba without express government permission and therefore all things dealing with US/Cuban travel are handled by the US Treasury Department and not the State Department. If it comes to light that you have visited Cuba without the proper permissions, you will be interrogated by an investigator from Treasury—and not very nicely—as to a detailed itinerary of your movements while in Cuba, including an account of the money and types of currency you spent, even whether or not you’d first exchanged your dollars abroad into another foreign currency before arriving in Cuba (I tried this—no go). You will be asked to write down an accounting of every centavo spent and hourly itinerary of your visit and submit it during the investigation. If it is determined you have spent American wealth on Cuban soil, you will be fined $10,000 for the first offense.

Therefore, any American who gets caught visiting Cuba without permission from the Treasury Department can expect to be levied with a $10,000 fine for the first offense. Because this is a federal adjudication, they can garner this money from any federal money the guilty might eventually recieve, including their Social Security old age pension.

For the first time in many decades there are direct flights to Cuba from the United States. These were inaugurated in 2014 and visas are still very difficult to get for individuals. Some of the spending rules mentioned above have been suspended for these individuals.

Fidel Castro’s father, Angel Castro, was a uneducated peasant laborer who worked hard, saved, and made good. But, due to his almost neurotic frugality, he and his family lived humbly during his lifetime. He spent his money on two things: education for his children and land. He bought a lot of land over his lifetime. The joke among the executives at United Fruit (now Chiquita Banana) in the ‘50s was that when they went home at night to sleep, Angel would move the fences.

Fidel Castro was educated in excellent Cuban private schools and while at the University of Havana was a basketball and baseball star. As a honors graduate, he started post graduate studies in law with a passionate ambition to eventually be a Cuban Supreme Court justice before being gradually radicalized by the anti-Batista element on campus.

Most Cuban customs employees are very good about not stamping US passports with evidence that shows the possessor had visited their country.

Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, the American classic novel about racism in a small depression-era Alabama town, is living in an assisted living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, the setting of her only published novel. She says that she never published another book because that was all she had to say and has no need to repeat it. She also says that she never wants to go through the publicity campaign and publicly defend another controversial book.

Atticus Finch was modeled after her father, a small-town lawyer during the depression who had unsuccessfully defended two black men for murder in the 1920’s. The novel was inspired by this, the goings on in Monroeville, and the Scottsboro Boys rape trial. The character Dill was modeled on Truman Capote, who in real life was a neighbor of young Harper Lee and they grew up to be life-long friends. Lee eventually assisted Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood. Capote’s first book, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was about growing up in Monroeville and there was a character in it based on the young Harper Lee.

Even though she has won many awards for this work, including the Pulitzer, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the civilian equivalent of the Medal of Honor), and many honorary university degrees, she has never given an acceptance speech. Today, in her late eighties, she is in a wheel chair and a bit forgetful, but says she enjoys letters from well wishers. A note simply addressed to “Ms. Harper Lee, Monroeville, Alabama,” will be sure to get to her.

Hmmm! Playing Tarot Poker with a Jesuit, huh!! Interesting!

Italy experiences more than 140 earthquakes on any given day.

On average each of us passes a 183 liters of gas a year.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Sooo…if we didn’t pass it would we become airborne and just drift away? lol

I think it would be extremely uncomfortable.

I have the 2nd rarest blood type, o negative with the Rh factor.
I gave blood today and the research facility where I donate is sending this batch to Rorsch labortories in Germany where they are researching growing your own organs from blood cloning. My last donation went to canada for heart research.
My blood is all around the world. lol

That’s awesome Coloma! My blood type is A negative, which is a lot more common.

A- is still quite rare. I’m A- also.

I think mine is B positive. Kind of ironic some days.

O negative is the only blood type that is of a universal nature, meaning all of you could use my blood but I can only receive O-. It is also the only blood type that cannot be cloned. Some say we are of an alien race. lol

I believe it!

@Coloma Are you telling me that I’m an alien? That will explain why I’m too insane for a teenager :)

@Coloma, I too am O-, but my understanding was it is fairly common. I gave blood all the time when I was in the service (free day off). They told me then it was fairly common, but highly sought because of its universal nature, making it useful in emergency situations where there may not be time or opportunity for typing. The alien thought would certainly explain a lot, especially since no-one supposedly related to me has O-. My daughter is O+, and she’s the only one with O besides me. My parents and siblings, anyone else I know of, no O.

I also have donated bone marrow for research, I think stem cell research, but then that was discontinued due to new legistlation from G.W. It was a real pain in the ass, well, up just a bit, but it paid well. I had to quit when they told me my bone was too hard, and they had a lot of difficulty cutting. Gawd, it feels like having a tooth drawn, but pulled the looong way down through the back of the hip. During the donation is AWFUL, but after they withdraw the needle, it’s no problem. They put on a band aid, and the rest of the day is spent feeling like you backed hard into the corner of a desk. If anyone makes the decision to give bone marrow to a recipient sometime, they should plan to do a lot of walking right after to keep it from getting stiff and painful.

@Jonesn4burgers O- with the Rh factor is the caveat. :-)

The US minimum wage 50 years ago was $1.25/hr., which comes to $2600 per year before taxes.

Adjusted for inflation that would be the equivalent of $9.27/hr., which comes to $19281.60 annually.

It is 19 minutes past 5.

Not here. It’s 22 minutes past 10!

23 minutes past 9 here.

It’s 54 minutes past 8 in Alaska.

Random rule from the Havamal; never leave home without your sword.

It’s 0 minutes past 2 here in Florida.

3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies, equals $1.19,which is the largest amount of US money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

Paraphilia is the medical term for when someone obtains sexual gratification from exposing themselves in public.

Martymachlia is a type of paraphilia involving the sexual attraction of engaging in a public sex act.

When either interfere with a person’s quality of life or normal functioning capacity, such as repeated arrests, it is considered a psychological disorder categorized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th Edition (class 302.4) as a sexual deviation.

However, by that formula, if someone was independently wealthy and had enough money to pay the fines and legal fees required to escape incarceration, and wasn’t negatively affected by what others thought about them (potential employers, clients, business partners), this wouldn’t negatively affect their quality of life and therefore could not be considered a sexual deviation.

This wouldn’t bother me much because I’m not overly concerned about the public sex acts of others, but I wonder what other sexual deviations meet the same rather unscientific criteria.

One ridiculous reason for the Vietnamese to win the war against America:

There was a Vietnamese colonel who worked for America and fought against his own kind. He was notorious for having an absolute obsession to women. His latest “lover” was a beautiful singer. He was totally hooked by her, hanging out with her as often as he had to attend military discussions, choosing luxurious places just to stay with her, and thinking of her everyday. One day he was back from a date with her. While he was lying on his bed, his head filled with the details of the date, an American general called him to inform him of an important meeting. He got angry and shouted at the general, saying he would go nowhere. The general was irritated and told his bosses about the event. Some time later the colonel was fired. It turned out that the meeting the general referred to was about how to stop an operation of the Vietcong. And because it wasn’t discussed thoroughly (since the colonel was busy with his lover and the general was busy accusing the colonel for being irresponsible), the operation was successful.

Yeah. It was probably all that Tamakeri he was paying her for. Hard to keep your mind on your work under those conditions.

@dxs Zero minutes past 2…sooo, that would be 2 straight up then. lol
It is now 54 minutes past 8, p.m. here. Oh why did I eat 4 tacos an hour before bed?

Milo meows in G#/A.

When some land snails mate they fire calcareous darts from their vagina into their partner.

These are known as ‘love darts’

@El_Cadejo Most human males do that too. lol

My daughter works in an art store and she made the coolest, pressed glass necklace pendants from the wings of a dead Swallowtail Butterfly she found recently. I want one, awesome piece of jewelery!

I’m Batman.

@Symbeline If you’re Batman I get to be Pussywoman.

Batpussy and WomanMan. lol

@Coloma You can be CockRobin.

LMAO you guys. I didn’t expect that. It was funny. lol

@Symbeline We are a warped bunch aren’t we?

Sure are yo lol. :D

We all play together well in the warped sandbox. lol

Yeah, we do, we get along, have fun, and respect each other completely. What the hell is wrong with us?~

^^^ Cheers Batpussyman.

That’s the key isn’t it. The answer to life.

@Coloma And now it’s 19*8 – [5!]cos(π/3) minutes past √(96/4+57).
Or it was before I took the time to write this post…

@dxs Only you can understand…

Many can understand…few would want to admit it!

9,600 children died today
as a result of chronic malnutrition.
There are now 7.1 people living on Earth.
27% of them, or 1.9 billion, are children.
20% of them suffer from chronic malnutrition.
47% of these will not see their 21st birthday.
100 million children under five are underweight.
3.5 million children die of malnutrition every year.

870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010–2012.

Between 1990 and 2012, the number of chronically undernourished people declined from 18.6 percent to 12.5 percent of the world’s population, or a decrease of 132 million people.

During the same period, the number of chronically undernourishment declined from 23.2 percent to 14.9 percent in developing countries.

The number of hungry in developed countries rose, however, from 13 million in 2004–2006 to 16 million in 2010–2012,

20% of children in the US, or 1 in 5, struggle with hunger.

@Espiritus_Corvus Now I feel guilty looking at my glass of beer, delicious bowl of watermelon, apple slices and cheese.

Naw, that’s not why I put that up there. I just ran across the latest stats today and thought they were interesting, but kind of useless in respect to my position at the moment. I was surprised by some of it. Things have actually improved in some respects in certain parts of the developing world. But the most surprising item there is that hunger has increased remarkably in the developed world while it has decreased in the developing world.

After I posted it I thought, Jesus, these people must think I’m the life of the fucking party, being Friday night there and all. Crow the buzz kill. But that wasn’t my intention at all. It’s just that some of it surprised me.

@Espiritus_Corvus did not kill the buzz, just put it into hibernation for a long time^^

These are the net results of the nocturnal readings of an insomniac in just the past few weeks:

Between 1800 and 1896 there were twenty-something documented sightings of what we today call Unidentified Flying Objects. In the eight months between November 1896 and June, 1897, however, there were over 120 documented UFO sightings. 103 of these were reported in April, 1897, all of them in the states that lay between the Rockies and the Mississippi.

On the first day of the Battle of the Somme river in northern France, July 1st, 1916, between 0730 and 1100 in the morning, the British sustained over 60,000 casualties, including 19,000 dead. By the time the battle was called off three months later, both sides had lost over 900,000 casualties, more than the combined cumulative carnage of the 1945 atom bomb attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The front lines had moved less than a half-mile.

The region inhabited by the Spartans of ancient Greece was named Laconia. King Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, evidently didn’t like much smaller Spartan state’s incursions into his territory and sent this warning to frighten them into obedience: “If I enter Laconia with my army, I shall lay Sparta to waste.” The Spartans replied with a single word: “_If_.” “Laconic” means terse, or to the point, in recognition of the Spartan style. The word “spartan,” meaning bare and without ornamentation, also comes from that warrior culture.

Mayflies run through their entire life-cycle in only a few hours. They live only to create more mayflies. They are born without mouths or alimentary canals as these are unnecessary.

Earwigs are completely harmless. Those nasty pincers in the rear are for holding objects only and are not powerful enough to break the skin.

Ares, the Greek god of war, was the fiery, bad tempered, dominating father of Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Panic). Let that be a lesson to domineering fathers who want strong sons. This behaviour has the same effect on dogs.

Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea at the time of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, was the son of Herod the Great, an extremely ambitious nobleman who, as a young man, married the sister of Agrippa I the king of the Roman client state of Judea and environs (appointed by Cesar Augustus). The man who would become Herod the Great then went to Rome and convinced the new emperor Caligula that Agrippa, his new brother-in-law, was mismanaging the country and skimming too much off the top. Agrippa was assassination forthwith and Herod the G got the job.

G had a bunch of kids with a view that his sons would rule most of what is the mid-east today after he had conquered it or had his daughters married into the ruling families. The daughters get little mention in the histories unless they were successfully married off to other powerful leaders. But after the murder of Agrippa, G’s wife was no longer of any political use to him, so he had her – the mother of his children – banished to a desert hellhole in the land of Nabutea on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. But his children turned out to be wasteful malingerers, dandies and fops, and after one of them tried to poison him in a weak attempt at a coup d’etat, Big G had most of them killed. Then he started over again by marrying a piece of arm candy from nearby Samaria and had more boys, the youngest of which was Herod Antipas.

Herod Antipas comes across as a kind of wimp, a true son of Ares. He inherits his position from his domineering, micro-managing father and appears to not able to make decisions without a council involved. He tired of his first wife and lured the wife of his half-brother, Herod Philip I, who was the tetrarch of the smaller province of Idumea on Antipa’s southern border. She, Herodias, came with his brother’s daughter, the beautiful teenager Salome. This didn’t set well with a certain itinerant proselyte named John the Baptist who, growing in popularity after he baptised his cousin Jesus, became obsessive about Herodias’ concerning this illegal marriage, sprinkling his sermons with personal attacks and even accusing her of screwing the palace soldiery. Antipas was already having trouble with his Jewish subjects, which represented an overwhelming majority of the population of his tetrarchy, so he would do much to appease them by building a brand-new rabbinical college, loosening up some restrictive business regulations, even converting to Judaism. They weren’t buying it. Even though Herodias was all over him to do something about shutting up this John the Baptist character, Antipas wouldn’t touch him for fear of riling his subjects further, although he did eventually have John imprisoned to appease her.

Then Salome became the subject of a rather lecherous episode on Antipa’s part when during his birthday party he got drunk in front of a bunch of his peeps and foreign dignitaries and began hounding his young niece to do a strip tease for them, finally begging her with promises of half his kingdom. Herodias, who was at his side during all this, didn’t like it one bit, but being at least as ambitious as her father-in-law, saw opportunity. She told Salome to ask for the head of John the Baptist in exchange for the dance. Herod reluctantly agreed and John lost his head, became a martyr and eventually an icon of Christianity. Antipas marriage to Herodias was a short and unhappy one and he went on to take many more wives, younger as he got older, and at least two her were blood relations.

There is a ton of more ugly dish on this family, but, in short, the Herods appear to be the trailer trash of royalty.

The Latin term, sub rosa, means that whatever it is referring to is secret. This comes from an old custom of placing a rose over a door frame to indicate that whatever is said inside that room is not to be repeated.

“Chortle” is a word coined by Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, as a combination of “chuckle” and “snort.” He also coined the word “brunch,” which is a combination of “breakfast” and “lunch.” These types of word combinations are known as portmanteaus.

Each spring a sugar maple tree produces between one and eight pints of sap. It can take forty pints of sap to make one pint of maple syrup.

John Paul Jones’ ship, the Bonhomme Richard, was a rotten, stinking, worm-infested French loaner that had been captured earlier from the British and given to the American Navy as war assistance. Before he had even begun to fight, Jones’ ship had been dismasted in a moderate wind while crossing the Atlantic. In September, 1789, he encountered a British man ‘o war, a heavily-gunned ship of the line and, after taking a brutal canon fire, he was given the option of surrendering to the enemy. His famous reply was, “I have not yet begun to fight!” then he and his men managed to board and take control of the much larger British warship. As the Bonhomme Richard sank nearby due to her injuries, her crew cheered loudly.

According to former Los Angeles County coroner-to-the-stars Thomas Naguchi, talcum powder is asbestos in powdered form. He made this statement in his book, Coroner at Large (1985), warning users that heroine on the west coast is often cut with talcum powder.

The distress call “May-day” is not the legacy of a panicked French pilot screaming “Merde!” into his microphone as he was going down in flames. It comes from the French for “Help me”—M’aidez.

“In 1961, NBC created the Bullwinkle Show, a spinoff of AAABC’s Rocky and His Friends. Originally, the cartoons were introduced by an antlered Bullwinkle sockpuppet. The scripts were written by Greenwich Village ‘beatnik’ writers such as Buck Henry, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks for pick-up money. The puppet would make fun of current events, celebrities, including Walt Disney. On one occasion, the puppet told his audience to pull the knobs off their TV sets. ‘In that way, we’ll be able to be with you next week.’ NBC, after hearing complaints from the parents of an estimated twenty thousand tots who complied, was furious. The following week, Bullwinkle asked the kids to put the knobs back on with lots of glue, ‘and make it stick!’ Not surprisingly, the puppet was dropped from the series soon after, the writers fired, then slowly and surreptitiously rehired one at a time by the producer.”
—Brought to you in Living Color: 75 years of NBC, Edited by Mark Robinson, Top Down Productions, Encino, California, 2002.

OK. One more.
In France, even after over 200 years, it is still illegal to name your pig Napoleon—which is precisely why George Orwell named the despotic pig Napoleon in his book, Animal Farm,. In the French version of the book, the pig is named Caesar in order to comply with French law. Napoleon/Caesar was an allegory for Joseph Stalin. Old Major was a combination of Marx and Lenin. Snowball was Leon Trotsky. Squealer was Molotov.

Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, was an idealistic, early British Communist, who felt personally betrayed by the Revolution after Stalin’s brutal and sadistic purges in the early 1930’s. He portrays a world dominated by a Stalin-type in his later dystopian novel, 1984.

dude…

Oh, sorry. I forgot where I was. It’s eight minutes past two pm.