Useless Facts

Have you seen some of the things humans get up to with non-human, inanimate, and otherwise just sexually WTF stuff? Look up Erika Eiffel sometime.

 

Dolphins wanting to bone humans seems fair enough. We've been screwing them over, and all other marine life, for quite some time ;-)

 

That's some weird shit man. "Her 20 year relationship with the Berlin Wall..."

 

So...apparently even though Africa is way bigger than Europe, it has a shorter coastline. 41,000 mi versus 18,950 mi.

 

Blame Norway, I suspect. Fjords.

 

Yeah, that was it.

And apparently, according to the article, Peter the dolphin committed suicide. Er, how? I mean, I get that animals can lose the willpower to survive and will basically just starve themselves to death but... the wording made it sound like the dolphin thought carefully about it and decided to end it all.

Well yeah, they’re humans with a higher brainpower compared to most animals. A dolphin going, “I must bone this strange creature before me”? I mean, are they even aware that a human is different from them? Or are we just strangely-shaped dolphins to them?

I dunno, maybe I’m vastly underestimating animal intelligence. I mean, apparently elephants think we’re cute — their brains are wired to see us like we see puppies.

I suppose it just boils down to primal urges. If it exists, someone wants to bone it. It ain’t just humans humping walls, towers, or cars

 

So you're saying Africa couldn't afjord it?

On a related note, believe it or not, coastlines actually don't have well defined lengths. All of the figures we see are just rough approximations due to coasts having have various features at widely differing scales, giving them a fractal-curve like properties, and therefore a fractal dimension which means the concept of length doesn't really apply as you'd get larger lengths the higher the resolution of your measuring apparatus. As you neared an infinitely detailed resolution of the coastline, both Europe and Africa have near infinitely long coastlines. This is called the Coastline Paradox.

 

A "like" click is insufficient to acknowledge a fellow initiate into the Coastline Paradox.

Although it should be simple enough. Measure the current head of state/government for each affected country, stake them out at low tide with the soles of their feet just wet, and if they survive the day, that's the coastline...

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Post responsibly kids, as soon as I find my car keys I'm off to bed!

Spoiler

I don't own a car, I'm fourteen steps (not twelve. Not yet) from my bed. Drink responsibly etc

 

Use a random name generator with an English / American set, take the surname and type it, followed by the word 'guitars', into a search engine, and you're practically guaranteed to find a guitar manufacturer with this name.

 

Vanna White has never worn the same dress twice on Wheel of Fortune.

 

The Mongolian metal band "The Hu" received the highest order of merit in Mongolia (The Great Ghenkis Khan Order) for promoting Mongolian culture worldwide amongst young people. You can read the full award here.

 

@jannert, check this out!

 

Oh, wow. They must be so happy. This award doesn't surprise me at all, when I think about it. I got interested in Mongolia, years ago, through ...believe it or not ...collecting and admiring postage stamps. Many of the Asian countries have nice stamps, but the ones from Mongolia stood out for me, immediately. Mongolian stamps are large, colourful, energetic and show pride in their own country's culture. I was immediately taken with their stamps.

I find it fascinating what different countries choose (or chose, before the days of franking...grrr) to depict on their stamps. A unique set of stamps enlightens me about that country and makes me interested in countries I might not have taken notice of before. It's one of the reasons I collect stamps (in a minor way.) I am not the least bit put off if the stamps have been used, either. In fact, it's even more fun for me, if they have been used. That's what stamps are for! A used stamp has BEEN places.

 

An octopus has nine brains.

 

Adrian Tchaikovsky's second SF novel, Children of Ruin, goes into how that might affect their psychology. (Read book 1 Children of Time first. It's about spiders!)

 

Are they self-contained little cognitive/nervous centers, or does each have a specific function?

 

Didn't get that deep into it. There's one brain in the head and one in each of the tentacles, so I would assume the tentacle brains are dedicated to the operation of the arms.

 

In the book I mentioned the brains are described as "the reach" and "the crown." From that book and some random discovery channel stuff I've read, octopi operate normally with their central brain determining the broad course of action they'd like to take (Think I'll go that way) but in the mean time the tentacles are semi-autonomous and wander about independently, noticing things along the way. If one of them finds something interesting the animal's whole attention may become focused on it, then it operates as one. Imagine a group of teenagers going through the mall (for younger readers, "malls" used to be places kind of like an offline Amazon with different "stores" that specialized in certain types of goods or services) with the agreed-upon intent of ending up at the food court for pizza. However, their attentions wander as they make their way from the parking lot through the East Wing, with different members of the group looking into different stores on either side. If one of them spots something particularly interesting, like a... I'm old, I don't know what teenagers like. Maybe a store that will do piercings without a parent's signature? So anyway, one of them finds an interesting store, calls the others' attention to it, Chelsea (she's the unofficial leader) agrees that it looks cool (or dope, or rad, or bad, or hip or hep or fnord or whatever the current term is) and all of a sudden they all zip inside.

 

Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) is currently the highest paid actor.

1. Dwayne Johnson: $89.4 million
2. Chris Hemsworth: $76.4 million
3. Robert Downey Jr.: $66 million
4. Akshay Kumar: $65 million
5. Jackie Chan: $58 million
6. Bradley Cooper: $57 million (tie)
7. Adam Sandler: $57 million (tie)
8. Chris Evans: $43.5 million
9. Paul Rudd: $41 million
10. Will Smith: $35 million

Spoiler

This thread isn't the right place for me to offer my opinions on how many of the above can actually act, but I'll confess the list would be a lot shorter if I did.

 

Drowned himself?

 

Huh. Thor is worth more than Iron Man.

 

I heard rumors about farmers and their cattle, while I was growing up.

Didn't take them seriously until I read about this dolphin.