Useless Facts

When listening to Pandora or Spotify, and they interupt your music to ask ‘Are you still listening’..... there’s never a button marked ‘No, I am not.’

 

Under what circumstances would that button ever be pressed?

 

If you're deaf?

 

According to this juice I drink, which has these "Real facts" underneath the bottle caps: Panama is the only place in the world where you can see the sun rise on the Pacific and set on the Atlantic.

 

How? Unless Panama is on a strip that is spinning opposite the rest of the earth, which I doubt, they are full of shit.

 

I had to google it, cause I'm a true American and geography is my weakest subject.

 

If you put your head back and gargle, it is impossible to say the word 'gargle'!
(and, yes, I have tried, many times. I never made it past the first syllable)

 

Look carefully at a map of Panama. It's shaped like the letter S lying on its side. The Atlantic coast is actually west of the Pacific coast.

 

That's because in order to say the "ah" sound, the back of your tongue has to drop, which means if there's water in your mouth you'll choke.

 

It's actually the 'arhg' that gets me. I've never made it to 'gl'.

 

Yeah that's what I meant. Basically, the reason why gargling works is because it starts with the articulation for a 'g' sound. To make that sound, you raise the back of your tongue and lower your soft palate, and clamp them together to make a complete seal at the back of your mouth. That means you can tilt your head back and the liquid doesn't enter your airway. Then you increase the air pressure behind that closure, and release it just enough that the air will bubble through and prevent the liquid from escaping. If you try to say the vowel sound in the word "gargle" while doing this, your tongue base and soft palate will move too far apart, and the air pressure will no longer be sufficient to prevent the liquid from pouring back into your airway. You might be able to do it with a more viscous substance which would require less air pressure to prevent it from pouring into your airway. Answers on a postcard.

 

It's funny as hell to try!

 

Well a Russian Scientist or something like that, has found that spanking can be
a form of therapy for certain mental illnesses. Interesting little bit of research.
http://rozgamed.narod.ru/enmain.html

 

The qibla (direction of the shortest straight line to Mecca, which Muslims face during their prayers) for Juneau, Alaska is 5.44 degrees, or nearly straight north.

The Muslim community of Tromsø, Norway, which is above the Arctic circle, has solved the problem of Ramadan fasting during months when the sun never rises (or alternatively, sets) by keeping their fast aligned with that of Mecca.

 

The root word demi. It is not something you would really want tacked on to anything
you identify as, unless you're a god. Other wise it makes you sound pretty much not
really worth it.

As it is defined: Half; intermediate 2. Inferior or less in size, quality, etc. : Partial

So not much better if you are a god either I suppose.

 

The 13th DBLE, 13e Demi-Brigade de Légion Étrangère, are pretty cool though.

​

When I went through my inevitable* post-Marines Legion phase, that was the unit I had in mind to try and join.

*maybe not inevitable, but I know a lot of guys saw a certain appeal​

 

I've never been to a burial funeral, only cremations.

I feel kind of robbed; the drizzle falling from grey skies, the crows cawing in the trees and the monotonous drone of the vicar's committal as the coffin is lowered into the wet, shiny hole.

 

I've never been to a burial either, it's not really a tradition up here. I'm going to assume it's because ground's too hard to break half of the year, so the whole service by the hole fell out of favour.

 

I've already said to everyone that knows me that at my funeral, free booze will be provided and lively music. Celebrate my life - don't mourn my death. It's less grim and somber that way.

But in terms of useless facts. did you know that charcoal burners used to sit on a stool with only one leg? This was because they needed to stay awake and make sure the charcoal burned at exactly the right temperature for a specific time. if they fell asleep during the 3(?) days that they are burning it for then it may all be ruined. So. they sat on a single legged stool that required a person to be constantly vigilant otherwise they'll type over.

 

I didn't even know charcoal burning was something people 'did', let alone anything else.

 

To make charcoal you need to burn wood very slowly over s very long period of time.

Coal however is different to charcoal - charred coal (I think that how charcoal came about.)

 

I have, one of my high school classmates. His dad had a private plane and an overinflated sense of his piloting skill, and it took them three days to find the crash site. The funeral procession was pretty much the entire high school, I think it ran a couple miles long.

Even after the holy man muttered his magic words the gravediggers seemed loathe to lower the caskets into the hole, but no one was leavingk hundreds of high school kids in their best approximation of formal funeral black. When they finally tripped the switches, Karen ran forward and tucked a note into the mass of flowers on his coffin as it lowered into the earth.

 

I have been to two burial funerals.
The second one for my brother in-law's little brother,
he put his Ranger patch on the casket before they lowered it.

 

My dad was cremated. Trying to spread his ashes was difficult, as they'd put them into a screw lid container, and then glued the lid! We ended up scattering his ashes over a bridge onto a local railway track. He was a trainspotter.

In terms of useless facts, we discovered after his death that we had a train track of sorts in our back garden! It was a small set up to transport the bricks up the hill for building the houses.

 

This is what the modern-day* city of Hiroshima, Japan looks like from 31,000 feet.



*Sept 27th, 2015 per the Google data.