Useless Information

[Geoff]

Raiders , came accross this recently , decided to post for a bit or a giggle. My thoughts are in blue

Geoff

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.

Not if your a 2 finger typest

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

I can live with that

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

Terrific

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

That could be a worry

The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).

Yep, I knew this one would pop up

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous":

tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

Now there is a challenge for some additions

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order:

"abstemious" and "facetious."

I cannot even pronunce those words

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

OK , give it a test

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

And zero in it's brain

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

Until it is feed time

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

For my wife , when shopping , back in a jiffy ,it is about 3 hours

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

Don't plan to get that close

A snail can sleep for three years.

Not the snails in my yard

Almonds are a member of the peach family.

So why do they not have fury skins

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

After a few drinks , I can relate to that

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

That must have been dissapointing

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

Thought we had enough any way

If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

God , I needed to know that

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!

That explains the interjestion

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

Not planning on testing that

The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

Sounds like my boat

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.

Makes going over in a barrel more challenging

There are more chickens than people in the world.

I bet KFC are pleased

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

Did that make him a better P.M.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Now there is a piece of useless information to end on

Now you know everything!

Geoff

Edited March 5, 2007 by Geoff

[mrsswordfisherman]

Thanks Geoff for sharing that.

Some of those sorts of questions come up at trivia nights

Perhaps one time we will have a Fishraider Trivia Night

Cheers mrsswordfisherman

[Mondo Rock]

Hmmm - the 'goldfish have only a three second memory' theory has now been fairly conclusively debunked. As the author (in blue) notes - goldfish remember plenty of things for a very long time, such as to rise to food when the owner walks to the tank.

Based on this error I'm hoping they're wrong about the nose and ears thing. I have a big nose and very big ears and do not like to think about what another 40 or 50 years of growth will look like!!!

[mrmoshe]

Hmmm - the 'goldfish have only a three second memory' theory has now been fairly conclusively debunked. As the author (in blue) notes - goldfish remember plenty of things for a very long time, such as to rise to food when the owner walks to the tank.

Based on this error I'm hoping they're wrong about the nose and ears thing. I have a big nose and very big ears and do not like to think about what another 40 or 50 years of growth will look like!!!

Funny you should mention fish and hearing...i was doing some research on this and came across a 1936 Modern Mechanics magazine article on this very subject.

It appears fish CAN hear..or perhaps it's just the vibrations sent out by a noise.

Here is the article in it's entirity...not bad for 1936 research.

So bottom line...keep it quiet while fishing I guess.

Cheers,

Pete.

Can Fish Hear?

…STRANGE TESTS GAUGE SENSES OF DUMB CREATURES

“DUMB” animals are learning to talk. Not by ord of mouth, but in roundabout ways they are telling scientists how they feel, what they see and hear, and even what they think about. Age-old mysteries—always the source of controversy—are evaporating as research workers peer into the minds of inarticulate creatures.

Only recently have experimenters succeeded in hurdling what has long been an insurmountable obstacle— the fact that animals, unlike human laboratory subjects, cannot give verbal reports of their experiences and emotions. Through ingenious artifices that establish, in effect, a common language between the animals and their investigators, their innermost sensations are now being revealed.

To test the acuteness of an animal’s senses, such as smelling and hearing, P. Hachet-Souplet, director of the Zoological Institute at Paris, France, employs highly intelligent dogs that have been trained to stand up, seat themselves, or lie down at a command.

Through a funnel, he saturates a sponge strapped over the nose of one of these subjects with a strong-smelling liquid, like formic acid or lactic acid. Promptly the dog is instructed to lie down. Again and again the procedure is repeated, until the dog reclines of its own accord at the first whiff. Now the investigator gradually diminishes the dose of odorous fluid with each test. Presently the dog fails to respond. By this signal, the experimenter knows that the odor is too faint to recognize. He has reached the limit, or “threshold,” of the dog’s ability to detect the smell, and the quantity of pungent fluid employed in the final trial is a true measure of the dog’s keenness of scent. The tests not only confirm the belief that a dog can perceive far fainter odors than a human being can, but also show exactly how much superior its ability is.

For a test of hearing, the investigator uses the sound of water dripping upon a metal disk. In this case, the dog is taught to rise from a lying position when it hears the sound. By using disks of different tonal qualities, it is possible to determine how the dog’s acuteness of hearing varies with the musical pitch of the sound, as well as with its loudness.

More generally in vogue among experimenters is the scheme of training an animal to give responses, or “conditioning” it, by the use of mild electric shocks.

This method has the outstanding advantage of being applicable to virtually all kinds of animals. A Russian experimenter, Prof. J. P. Frolov, recently used it to study the hearing of fish!

No organ of hearing has ever been discovered in a fish, he points out, yet a wily fisherman never talks • while he is fishing. Can a fish really hear?

To find out, he tethered a fish in a small aquarium upon a light, flexible electric wire, with plenty of slack for his subject to swim freely. At the touch of a key, a telephone receiver submerged in the water emitted an audible sound, while the fish simultaneously received a gentle electric shock through its wire leash. It responded with agitated movement. After repeated trials, Prof. Frolov omitted the shock and sounded the telephone signal alone. To his delight, the fish leaped into action as before! Evidently the fish could hear the sound, had learned to associate it with receiving an electric shock, and jumped even when no shock was forthcoming. Even the ringing of a bell suspended above the water proved audible to a fish in further tests.

As universal as dislike of an electric shock, in the animal kingdom, is the desire for food, and this affords still another way of plumbing the minds of animals.

That apes rival human beings in ability to distinguish colors was demonstrated by the late dean of Russian psychologists, Prof. Ivan P. Pavlov, who trained a monkey to climb down from its perch for food when he displayed a red disk as a signal. Raising a blue disk brought no response, for the monkey had learned that no food would be forthcoming. Similar tests show that dogs, cats, fish, and guinea pigs can tell the difference between different hues. The director of the Paris zoo found it possible to train a dog to seize a morsel of food, placed behind a slowly revolving disk with four holes rimmed in different colors, only when an aperture of a certain color came into position.

Can animals reason, as human beings do? Again, their ingenuity in seeking food supplies the test. The French experimenter demonstrates the intelligence of a beaver by hanging a can of grain above its reach, with a cord anchored at the floor. Soon the beaver learned to gnaw through the cord so that the can would fall and spill, providing a feast.

It is methods such as these that permit animals to serve as subjects for practical medical research.

Edited March 6, 2007 by MallacootaPete

[Guest IFishSick.]

That's awsome Geoff

[Mondo Rock]

Aron - most, if not all, of those words are Latin and not English.

[Davemmm]

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

Then he ran through the house to tell someone and his mother cracked the shits

[KingsRule]

Nice one Geoff, some of those comments cracked me up!

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

That must have been dissapointing

[Jaybee]

Now Aron, that must have taken some time, Go fishing or something.

Cheers Jeff.

[Flightmanager]

The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

I find this one a little hard to believe , there are 63,360 inches to a statute mile , so , at 1 gallon per 6 inches , she would burn 10,560 gallons , or 33 tons of fuel per statute mile.

Her actual consumption of fuel at her service cruise speed (28.5 Knots) is 380 tons every 24 hours , or about 50 feet for each gallon burnt.

Ross