What new thing have I learned-
That denying the holocaust IS illegal..
Not that I would deny it.. I would be stupid to do that.
But I never knew there was a law against it.
interesting................
shewolfnm, in which country is it illegal?
Today I learned about the pdfx-1a file format some mag publishers are asking for these days. Had to upgrade to Acrobat 7.0, download it offline and I'm just a little nervous because at the moment, I'm minus a security program. I'll take care of that tonight tho'.
I have been learning over the last week or so that I am unprepared to enter into higher education in the post-internet world.
eoe wrote:Today I learned about the pdfx-1a file format some mag publishers are asking for these days. Had to upgrade to Acrobat 7.0, download it offline and I'm just a little nervous because at the moment, I'm minus a security program. I'll take care of that tonight tho'.
Hey, I learned about pdfx-1a recently too! Cool!
I have learned I am consistently an idiot.
Cliff Hanger wrote:I have learned I am consistently an idiot.
Honesty with one's self must surely be the first sign of getting a grasp of this issue. :wink:
It usually is...love that new avatar, Reyn!
I learned the "right-of-way" rule in foil fencing.
100 things we didn't know
1. Street brawlers sometimes arm themselves with potato peelers, according to the Home Office, which wants to make them banned weapons.
2. Farmers plant their crops up to three weeks earlier than 15 years ago. In the 1960s, temperatures from January to March averaged 4.2C; it rose to 5.6C in the 1990s.
3. Brussels sprouts have three times as much vitamin C as oranges.
4. Crows apparently like the taste of windscreen-wiper blades.
5. 52% of households have five or more remote controls.
6. Dame Judi Dench sends 450 Christmas presents, according to her daughter.
7. The heat generated by a laptop, and the knees-together pose needed to balance it, can damage a man's fertility.
8. Brazilians are the nationality most likely to read spam.
9. Some pigeons follow roads and turn off at motorway junctions to navigate their way round.
10. Ten people die on the UK's roads every day.
11. The opening lines of the Communist Manifesto - "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism" - were initially translated as "A frightful hobgoblin stalks through Europe".
12. Ronald Reagan started planning his own funeral the year he entered the White House almost quarter of a century ago. He died in June.
13. Smoking killed nearly one million people worldwide in 2000, according to the World Health Organisation.
14. Marine biologists say altruistic behaviour is not uncommon in dolphins.
15. UK scientists have developed a clock which ticks 1,000,000 billion times a second. Technically that's a quadrillion.
16. Prince Charles and Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, were born on the same day.
17. Ian Hislop, scourge of the media powerful, now knows that his grandfather's middle name was Murdoch.
18. There are 75 withdrawals from cash machines every second in the UK.
19. The collective noun for rhinos is "crash".
20. Osama Bin Laden refers to 9/11 as "Manhattan".
21. The word "electricity" was first used in English in about 1600 by Elizabeth I's physician.
22. George W Bush got the highest number of votes for president of any candidate in US history, in November 2004.
23. John Kerry got the second highest number.
24. Germany has an 18-year-old MP - Julia Bonk, a member of the Saxony legislature. Her name is not funny in German.
25. Half of Britons have a collection of more than 20 carrier bags at home, according to a survey. One in 10 people has up to 80.
26. The full names of Scooby Doo's Mystery Inc members are: Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Scooby "Scoobert" Doo. Shaggy is actually Norville Rogers.
27. So much for the overworked society, the average British employee actually works 75 minutes less a week than in 1997, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
28. The word "celeb" is not a recent invention - it was used in a letter to Woodrow Wilson in 1913. The word "sex", used to mean sexual intercourse, was first used in 1929.
29. The remains of thousands of mammoths have been found by fishermen in the North Sea.
30. The Sydney Harbour Bridge contains just 16 nuts and bolts. The rest is held together by rivets, because it doesn't need to be dismantled.
31. Herrings break wind to communicate and keep the school together.
32. Tory leader Michael Howard and wife Sandra watch a video of Brideshead Revisited every New Year.
33. Bob Dylan originally planned to use his first two given names, Robert Allen, as his stage name, because it sounded like the name of a Scottish king. After he saw some Dylan Thomas poems, he chose Dylan as his new surname instead.
34. Plastic surgery dates back to 600BC and the first nose job was in 1000AD.
35. George Bush and John Kerry shared the same debating coach while at Yale University. His name was Rollin Osterweis.
36. One in five British homes has a foot spa, although mostly they lie idle, among more than £3bn of "useless gadgets" to be found in UK homes, according to insurance firm Esure.
37. Although it's nearly 24 years since Jimmy Carter was US president, he still receives about 4,000 letters a month.
38. Yoda was based on Albert Einstein.
39. More Brits die each year falling from their hotel balcony than do in diving accidents, according to Foreign Office statistics.
40. There is a British Hat Council - it's the body which coined the phrase: "If you want to get ahead, get a hat." It reports that sales of hats to men have risen by 80% in the past year, and that £51m will be spent on headgear this year.
41. Twenty years ago , seven out of every 10 pints drunk in the UK were ale. Now, thanks to the rise of lager, stout and cider, the number is just three.
42. Running a car costs the average motorist £101 a week, according to the RAC.
43. In 1911, Pablo Picasso was one of the suspects arrested for the theft of the Mona Lisa.
44. Until 3 September 2004, the fastest bus in London was an old fashioned red double decker, registration number ALD 971B. Unlike other buses, according to reports, this one did not have a speed regulator and so could go above 30mph.
45. There is a world record for being able to squirt liquids out of a human eye. The existing record is 8.7 feet (2.65m), but a Turkish man claims to have broken the record with a 9.2 feet (2.8m) squirt.
46. Interesting historical footnote: Greg Dyke was on the Atkins diet at the time of the Hutton Report, he revealed in his autobiography.
47. A "jiffy" is 10 milliseconds in computer science terms.
48. Margaret Roberts (later Thatcher) helped invent the chemical process that produces Mr Whippy ice cream.
49. Guests at the Queen's coronation in 1953 pilfered toilet paper from Westminster Abbey. "It was found early on Coronation Day, that much of the lavatory paper had been removed, and in future it will be necessary to take steps to prevent this," official records released this year reveal.
50. A tribe living in a remote part of Brazil's Amazon rainforest has no words for numbers beyond two. The Piraha use "one" to mean one or roughly one, two means two, while any larger number is just "many".
51. The day after the atomic bomb exploded on Hiroshima, the banks re-opened. They had one customer, John Reader's book Cities recorded.
52. Up to 65% of children with a father in jail get imprisoned themselves, according to Home Office figures.
53. Phrase-turner extraordinaire Clive James says he originated the terms "underwhelmed" and "young fogey", but is yet to receive the recognition he deserves. He also says he's particularly proud of his description of the Conan the Barbarian-era Arnold Schwarzenegger as "a brown condom full of walnuts".
54. George Clooney listens to The Archers online, according to model Lisa Snowden who says she introduced him to it.
55. Having breaking news alerts delivered to your mobile phone may seem cutting edge, but the Daily Express pioneered the service back in 1914, offering personal war updates via telegram for a shilling each.
56. The Shining is the "perfect scary movie", according to researchers, who have come up with a scientific formula for such things. They identified the isolated setting, escalating music and chase scenes as some of the key elements in its success.
57. Gibraltar, which celebrated 300 years under British rule this year, was named Jebel Tarik - Tarik's mountain - by Moorish settlers in honour of their leader Tarik ibn Zeyad. The last syllable was lost over time.
58. Saddam Hussein's son Uday kept nine lions as the centrepiece of a bizarre menagerie of exotic animals. In July the lions were moved to Baghdad zoo.
59. Britons throw away enough rubbish every hour to fill the Royal Albert Hall.
60. The bookmakers William Hill loses 80,000 little pens a day - the sort used to fill out betting slips.
61. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, has got solar panels fitted on the roof of his Cricklewood home.
62. The founder of the Natural History Museum, Sir Richard Owen, was the man we have to thank for the word "dinosaur", literally meaning "terrible lizard".
63. Just one in a hundred workers goes to the pub for their lunch, according to a study. The same proportion spend lunch having sex.
64. Chef Gordon Ramsay says he gets between three and five parking tickets on any working day.
65. "Square eyes" might be real - Australian researchers have found that children who spend a long time inside watching television or on computers become more susceptible to short-sightedness.
66. An American girl aged between three and 11 has, on average, 10 Barbie dolls in her toy box.
67. It's 30 years since the world's first barcode was used. It was on a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit at a supermarket in Ohio. The gum is now an exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.
68. Bill Clinton revealed in his autobiography that he didn't learn to ride a bike properly until he was 22.
69. The theme music to Crimewatch UK, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in June, is called Rescue Helicopter - written by John Cameron.
70. And reports of UFOs have dwindled since the late 1990s. In the UK, sightings have gone from about 30 a week to almost zero; it's a trend echoed in the US and Norway.
71. Departing chancellors of the exchequer get to choose a cartoon caricature of themselves to hang on the staircase of 11 Downing Street. Not that the current occupant, Gordon Brown, is going anywhere just yet - this year he became Britain's longest-serving chancellor.
72. Desert locusts can travel 120 miles in 24 hours.
73. Ducks have regional accents. London ducks shout out a rough quack to be heard above the urban din; those in the West Country make a quieter, softer sound.
74. Lasagne has replaced chicken tikka massala as the favourite dish of Britons. Sainsbury's sold 13.9 million lasagne ready meals and just 7.4 million chicken tikka massalas last year. Tesco sold 9.8 million lasagnes and 6.3 million chicken tikka massalas.
75. Freak conditions above Everest can cause the sky to "fall in". An analysis of weather patterns in May 1996, by University of Toronto researchers, said eight people died when the stratosphere sank to the level of the summit.
76. More than one billion birds crash into buildings in the US every year. Mirrored office blocks are a particular hazard.
77. There are at least 17 Maxine Carrs in the UK, all of whom are ex-directory.
78. Defeated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says he once flew upside-down over Israel. It was, he says, the "perfect way" to see the Middle East.
79. Space is only 62 miles away. That's 100 kilometres.
80. Essex is the UK's book club capital, with more reading groups than any other county and spin-off events such as a walk-and-talk-about-books club.
81 . When people are in love, weird things happen. Men get more female hormones, and women get more male. Scientist Donatella Marazziti says it's as if nature wants to eliminate what can be different in men and women, perhaps to help the mating process.
82. Alan Smithee is a prolific director of film stinkers. His is the name directors use if a film is recut by the studio against their wishes. The alias was first used on the 1969 western, Death of a Gunfighter. Its origins are somewhat murky, but one theory goes that it is an anagram of "The Alias Men."
83. There's no mobile reception at the top of the Gherkin in London - it's too high up at 40 storeys. The phone companies hadn't expected a tower so tall, and it's above the reception area.
84. There are 1,049 offshore British islands. One of the late Norris McWhirter's great loves was visiting them all.
85. Poets die young... "On average, poets lived 62 years, playwrights 63 years, novelists 66 years and non-fiction writers lived 68 years," according to California State University's James Kaufman.
86. You can see the back of your own head in some parts of the universe as time and light are so curved. The universe is neither flat, nor football shaped - it looks like a flat-sided trumpet, German physicists believe.
87. One gigabyte of information - about a quarter of the memory of an iPod mini - is the equivalent of a pick-up truck load of paper.
88. In the past decade, four people in the UK have died in cemetery accidents, crushed by falling tombstones.
89. Continuing in this cheery vein, more than 1.2 million people die in traffic accidents worldwide each year. The first was Bridget Driscoll, knocked down by a car travelling at 12mph in London on 17 August 1896. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death, and warned: "This must never happen again."
90. A quarter of Australia's population was born outside the land Down Under.
91. Scientists have developed cress which changes from green to red when it comes near explosives - ideal for spotting landmines...
92. ...which is a good job as there are still about 100m undiscovered landmines in the world, just waiting to go off.
93. One in 12 of the country's workforce is a cleaner, according to the British Cleaning Council.
94. A cruise ship can put more than 130,000 litres of sewage into the sea each day.
95. There are a third more children at grammar schools now, under Labour, than there were 10 years ago under the Tories (150,750 now compared with 111,846 in 2003.)
96. One in four 16- and 17-year-old girls in the UK is on the contraceptive pill - more than ever before.
97. Matt Groening's father - the inspiration for Homer Simpson - has only complained once about his alter-ego's actions. It was an episode in which Homer badgered Marge into walking some considerable distance on a hot day to fetch him something.
98. Lord Baden Powell wanted a section on the dangers of "self abuse" in his Scouting for Boys. His original manuscript read: "A very large number of the lunatics in our asylums have made themselves ill by indulging in this vice although at one time they were sensible cheery boys like you."
99. Dom Perignon, the Benedictine monk, was originally employed by his abbey to get the bubbles out of the champagne, according to Gerard Liger-Belair's new book, Uncorked: the Science of Champagne.
100. Bill Clinton sent just two e-mails while he was president.
Unusual Facts
The digestive juices of crocodiles contain so much hydrochloric acid that they have dissolved iron spearheads and six-inch steel hooks that the crocodiles have swallowed.
The first atomic bomb exploded at Trinity Site, New Mexico.
The penculine titmouse of Africa builds its home in such a sturdy manner that Masai tribesman use their nests for purses and carrying cases.
Three astronauts manned each Apollo flight.
The domestic cat is the only species able to hold its tail vertically while walking. Wild cats hold their tail horizontally, or tucked between their legs while walking.
Out of all the senses, smell is most closely linked to memory.
When a hippopotamus exerts itself, gets angry, or stays out of the water for too long, it exudes red sweatlike mucus through its skin.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is predicted to topple over between 2010 and 2020.
The Penguin is the only bird that can swim, but not fly. It is also the only bird that walks upright.
Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature.
Unusual Facts
A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate!
A completely blind chameleon will still take on the colors of its environment.
A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
A crocodile always grows new teeth to replace the old teeth!
The Saguaro Cactus, found in the Southwestern United States doesn't grow branches until it is 75 years old.
Lightning keeps plants alive. The intense heat of lightning forces nitrogen in the air to mix with oxygen, forming nitrogen oxides that are soluble in water and fall to the ground in rain. Plants need nitrates to survive, so without lightning, plants could not live.
Snails breathe through their feet.
Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food.
Snowiest city in the U.S.: Blue canyon, California.
Because heat expands the metal, the Eiffel Tower always leans away from the sun.
I like yours, too. Have you seen Rowan Atkinson in "The Thin Blue Line"?
Not yet, unfortunately. Have you seen Eddie Izzard in "All the Queen's Men"?
No, but I just Googled it and I would watch if it came on the telly.
Come see me some time at "Chat With Reyn".
Unusual Facts
7,000 new insect species are discovered every year.
7-11 sells 10,000 pots of coffee an hour, every hour, every day.
75% of Honda vehicles purchased in the U.S. are manufactured in North America!
76% of Americans celebrate New Year's Eve in groups of less than 20.
80% of 10 year old girls in the U.S. go on a diet.
Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.
St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called 'Pigs Eye'.
Stilts were invented by French shepherds who needed a way to get around in wet marshes.
Strawberries have more vitamin c than oranges.
Streets in Japan do not have names.
Surgeons who listen to music during operations perform better than those who don't.
Sweden has more telephones per capita than any country on earth.
Switzerland has the highest per-capita consumption of soft drinks in the world.
Tablecloths were originally meant to be served as towels with which dinner guests could wipe their hands and faces after eating!
Unusual Facts
Eighty percent of Americans will be the victim of violent crime at least once in their lifetime.
Lab tests can detect traces of alcohol in urine six to 12 hours after a person has stopped drinking.
Sound at the right vibration can bore holes through a solid object.
The color black is produced by the complete absorption of light rays.
There are 3 golf balls sitting on the moon.
Air is denser in cold weather. A wind of the same speed can exert 25 percent more force during the winter as compared to the summer.
An iceberg contains more heat than a match.
Every cubic mile of seawater holds over 150 million tons of minerals.
A temperature of 70 million degrees Celsius was generated at Princeton University in 1978. This was during a fusionism experiment and is the highest man-made temperature ever.
Parker Brothers prints about 50 billion dollars worth of Monopoly money in one year.
It took Leo Tolstoy six years to write "War & Peace".
In the name of art, Chris Burden arranged to be shot by a friend while another person photographed the event. He sold the series of pictures to an art dealer. He made $1750 on the deal, but his hospital bill was $84,000.
More people have seen David Copperfield perform live than any other performer in the world.
