my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Community   » Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon   » Useless Fact's (Page 30)

This topic comprises 88 pages: 1  2  3  ...  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  ...  86  87  88

Author Topic: Useless Fact's Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-14-2003 05:50 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - "Achilles' Heel": Regardless of how tough a person may be,careful study will reveal a weak spot somewhere.Such was the case with one of the greatest legendary heroes of Greek mythology. In ancient times it was common knowledge that the water of the river Styx was potent—so potent that a baby dipped into it received supernatural protection. Skin touched by the water remained pliable,but was as tough as steel. One mother decided to give her son a kind of immortality.Hours after the boy was delivered,she hurried to the river and dipped him into the mysterious water.That made Achilles invulnerable over most of his body. But in the end,Achilles was killed during the Trojan War by a wound in his heel—the part his mother held when she dipped him in the river.Water didn't touch his heel,so the mythological superman had a small but mortal flaw. Stories about that mother's son have survived after many centuries.As a result,any seemingly invincible person's weakest point is his or her Achilles' heel. ~source used: "Why You Say It" by Webb Garrison~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-14-2003 09:08 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Who found the Rosetta Stone? A group of French engineers from Napoleon's army.In 1799,they were getting ready to demolish an ancient wall outside Rosetta,a city near Alexandria,Egypt.They stumbled upon a carved stone which,because it had the same message in three ancient languages,ended up becoming the key to translating Egyptian hieroglyphics. It just goes to show that it's not always the archaeologists and explorers who make the most significant finds-in fact,it' soften just some nobody who happens to be in the right place at the right time.For example,the discoverer of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a simple herdsman looking for a lost goat Neanderthal Man was uncovered by a group of German quarrymen in 1856.And the ruins of the lost city of Pompeii were discovered by a farmer digging in his vineyard in 1748. ~source used: "Just Curious about History, Jeeves" by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-15-2003 10:44 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - How beautiful was Cleopatra? Not as pretty as you'd imagine.A coin issued during her reign depicted her with straight hair,a hooked nose,and a pronounced chin.In fact,she looked disconcertingly like Robin Williams in drag. So,perhaps Cleopatra had inner beauty."Her beauty was by no means flawless," wrote the tactful historian Plutarch,adding that she had "irresistible charm" and a voice that was "beguilingly rich." That,and she had a kingdom the Romans had wanted to get their hands on for a long time.Still,she saved her kingdom for a while by becoming the lover of the two successive generals-Julius Caesar and Mark Antony-who had come to conquer Egypt,but were conquered by the lady's charms instead. Did Cleopatra use makeup? Quite a bit of it, actually.She even used some of the pigments that artists of the age were also using,including lead,which probably shouldn't be placed on your face if you value your health and sanity.Still,if you want to inspire Roman hands,here are some of her secrets: * Red ocher for cheek rouge * Henna on your palms to give them a youthful glow *A lead ore,called black galena,as an eyeliner and eyebrow pencil * Lapis lazuli for a blue-black tint on your upper eyelid,and malachite (copper ore) for a green tint on your lower lid. ~source used: "Just Curious about History, Jeeves" by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-16-2003 08:32 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - The origin of "Robot": These days,you can hardly pick up a magazine without seeing a prediction that a robot will soon be doing much of your work. Some who peer into the future may not realize that the name of the mechanical worker or servant comes from the stage. Karl Capek,a Czech playwright,was among the pioneers of modern science fiction.Capitalizing on publicity given to mechanical guns during World War I,he wrote a play called "R.U.R." The action of the drama centered on a group of mechanized monsters who revolted against their makers. Abbreviating the Czech term "robota", meaning "work" or "drudgery," Capek called one of his imaginary machinemen a "robot." His play proved a tremendous hit. Few dramas of the 1920s provoked so much discussion. As a result, industrialized modern culture borrowed from the world of entertainment and many languages adopted the word.Today we even have the science of robotics. ~source used: "Why You Say It" by Webb Garrison~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-16-2003 12:04 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why do people often feel sick right after strenuous exercise? To risk stating the obvious,the desire to barf after a one-hundred-yard dash is the body's way of telling us that we've overdone it—yet sports physiologists can't seem to agree on how it happens. It might be related to blood-glucose depletion or a temporary imbalance in the nervous system. Another theory: During intense anaerobic activity, muscles in the gut can clamp down and constrict the flow of blood, throwing one's metabolism out of whack. "It's like standing on a hose," explains Craig Horswill of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. "Take your foot off, and you have an initial blast of water before the pressure returns to normal." Scientists also believe there's a psychological dimension to postexertion nausea — a result of the nervous energy that builds up before a big race. "Athletes vomit most when the stakes are high," notes Horswill. "It's the equivalent of stage fright." Only messier. ~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison?" by Hampton Sides  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-17-2003 02:06 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - What are all those unpronounceable ingredients in shampoos? Did you ever glance at the list of ingredients in your favorite shampoo while your were showering? It makes for interesting reading and you can try to imagine what all those crazy-sounding chemicals are doing in your shampoo and what they are doing to your hair. The basic cleaning ingredients in shampoos are synthetic detergents, not soap. Detergent rinses cleaner than soap, which reacts with minerals in the water to form a scum. The most commonly found detergent in shampoo is probably well known to you from your shower-time reading— lauryl sulfate. It has long molecules with one end that attracts water and one end that grabs dirt and grease. When you shampoo, the detergent binds the dirt from your hair to water molecules, which are then rinsed out.Another ingredient is cocamide DEA, which gives shampooa nice, rich lather. Lather doesn't do much to help clean appealing to use are glycol sterate (makes it look pearly or opaque), celluloses (thickening agents), and propylene glycol, a humectant (which helps the hair stay wet). There are a host of dyes, fragrances, and natural ingredients that are supposed to do everything short of curing baldness. You can find almost any natural additive, such as beer, apricot or any other fruit you can name, herbs, coconut, honey, etc. One thing you don't want to find is fungi or bacteria. This is why manufacturers add preservatives with those long, unpronounceable methyl-names, such as methylchloroiso-thiazolinone or methylisothiazolinone. But if some unknown French chemist marketed a new full-body, conditioning, fungal/bacterial formula shampoo for overstressed hair, people would run right out to buy it! ~source used: "Thoughts for the Throne" by Don Voorhees~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-19-2003 12:20 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - What makes "stainless" steel stainless? Stainless steel was developed in 1913 by British metallurgist Harry Brearley,who was searching for a better lining for cannons.He discovered that chromium had the ability to create an oxide lining,and that steel made from iron and chromium resisted many corrosive chemicals. Stainless steel is coated with a thin,transparent film of iron oxide and chromium.This prevents soap,food,water,and air from getting to the metal below and eating it away.Since its coating is so smooth,stainless steel is very sanitary.Bacteria,fungi,and dirt have nowhere to hide and are easily washed away.For this reason,commercial kitchen surfaces and cooking equipment are often made of stainless steel. Another unique thing about this kind of steel is that it can "heal" itself.When scratched or nicked,the protective oxide immediately recoats the damaged area. Because of its great ability to resist rusting,it is an ideal material for cutlery, pots,and pans.Now,if they could only make stainless steel mufflers... ~source used: "Thoughts for the Throne" by Don Voorhees~ [ 09-21-2003, 03:53 PM: Message edited by: Bob Maar ]  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-21-2003 03:50 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - chauvinism: Most of us dream of making so lasting an impression on our fellow human beings that we will be remembered long after our passing. Not many of us ever achieve this high ambition and among those who do attain lasting fame,there is always a handful who "sought not fame but had it thrust upon them." So it is with the people whose names have been immortalized in our language by becoming common nouns and verbs. Take Nicolas Chauvin,for instance.He was a gallant soldier of Napoleon I,wounded in battle and everlastingly devoted to his peerless leader.By his own standards,he was one of the few true patriots remaining in France after his hero's exile and he was not shy about expressing his continuing high regard for Napoleon. It is ironic that his excessive zeal in behalf of a cause most of his fellow countrymen thought well lost resulted in his becoming an object of ridicule. Perhaps,though Nicolas Chauvin has the last laugh,for though all those who mocked him are long forgotten,his name remains a part not only of his native French but of other languages, including our own.So blind and unreasoning was this patriot's devotion to the lost imperial cause that the word "chauvinism" was coined to describe his fanaticism—and it remains in our language today as the one best word to indicate militant, boastful and wholly unreasoning devotion to one's country or race. In the twentieth century the term "male chauvinism" appeared and was used to describe an attitude of absolute conviction that the male is superior to the female in every respect. Women's Liberationists of the sixties and seventies used the expression as an epithet,often in the phrase "male 'chauvinist' pig." ~source used: "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William Morris and Mary Morris  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-23-2003 06:14 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - What do birds do in a hurricane? A number of authorities agree that birds do not get any special storm warnings before a hurricane that allow them to avoid it.In fact,bird-watchers find that oceanic birds often fly before the winds of a hurricane and end up far from their tropical homes. For example,sooty terns may be swept from Florida and the Caribbean and deposited on Long Island. After flying for days without feeding, the birds drop as soon as the hurricane reaches land, often exhausted and starving. As for land birds, all have their own territories, even in winter,and tend to stay there,seeking any shelter they can find, as they would in any storm. A migrating bird may turn back to land when it hits the bad weather on the fringes of a hurricane. There is almost certainly an increase in mortality in a hurricane because of exposure to heavy rains.In terms of the survival of bird species,only late nesters would be in serious trouble.By the time fall hurricanes arrive most birds have completed the raising of their young. ~source used: "The Book of Science Questions and Answers" by C. Claiborne Ray~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-23-2003 06:28 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Is it dangerous to hold in a sneeze? People who've attempted sneezus interruptus have invariably regretted it.It's a stupid thing to do and can even, in rare instances,kill you.When you sneeze,you're expelling aerosol particles at a speed of more than one hundred feet per second,a force akin to that of a fire hose.You need all of this force for a reason,of course.It's nature's way of clearing out any debris - pollen,dirt,dander,or,if you're a kid, lunchroom milk - that might be lodged in your sinuses and nasal tract. By and large, it's an effective mechanism,so effective that thousands of creatures throughout the animal kingdom, from parrots to ferrets to iguanas, have developed it.Holding in a sneeze, which is not a very easy thing to bring off in the first place, violates millions of years of evolutionary biology,directing all that aforementioned force "inward", thus creating a nasal cavity implosion. "Sneeze abortions", as the experts call them, have been known to cause fractures in the nasal cartilage, major nosebleeds,burst eardrums, broken blood vessels in the eye, detached retinas, even fatal strokes. If you happento be sick, holding in a sneeze can drive millions of tiny pathogenic particles deep into the sinus tissues, which can lead to serious infections.Alternatively, it can force air under the skin,causing a condition known as "facial emphysema". Gruesome outcomes all, and compelling proof that the only safe sneeze is an explosive one. ~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison?"by Hampton Sides~[/b]  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-23-2003 02:58 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - abracadabra: The word "abracadabra", much favored by magicians when practicing their sorcery, has a very long history, going back to the Greek 'abrasadabra', a word used by members of a Gnostic (early Christian) sect when invoking divine help. It may have come from the name of a leader of one of these sects, Abrasax, or from the initial letters of three Hebrew words: Ab, the father, Ben, the son, and Acadsch, the holy spirit. ~source used: "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William Morris and Mary Morris  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-25-2003 06:21 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Chastity Belts: Like the "right of the first night" (jus primae noctis, droit du seigneur), the supposed medieval law that entitled the lord of the manor to spend the wedding night with the bride of any of his vassals but that almost certainly never existed, the chastity belt is equally suspect. It is most unlikely that the chastity belt,a lockable device said to have been fastened around the stategic zones of the wives of medieval crusaders and other peripatetic knights,ever existed—except as a joke or a hoax. True,there are examples in museums, notably in the Cluny Museum in Paris. In 1950, however,the Cluny Museum stopped displaying all but one of its collection of chastity belts (the one exception was allowed to remain on public view as a curiosity). The reason? Like fakes,hoaxes have no place in a museum — and a French scholar,Edouard Haraucourt,had come to the conclusion,some years before,that this is just what the "chastity belt" is: a hoax. Common sense would indicate that a true chastity belt of the type supposedly worn by wives of knights who might be away for many months is a practical impossibility, given the necessary functions of the human, and especially female, body, unless it could be periodically removed - in which case it could scarcely serve its presumed purpose. ~source used: "More Misinformation" by Tom Burnam~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 09-26-2003 10:20 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - chickens: Does a baby chick breathe inside the egg? How? Yes it does. An eggshell may look solid, but it actually has about 8,000 pores that are large enough for oxygen to flow in and carbon dioxide to flow out. John Davy of Edinburgh, Scotland, proved this in 1863 by pumping pressurized air into an underwater egg and watching thousands of tiny bubbles appear on the surface. Why are some chicken eggs brown? A few decades ago, when people came to the conclusion that brown bread, brown flour, and brown sugar were more nutritious than their white counterparts, many also extrapolated that brown eggs must be healthier, too. Conversely, many lovers of white eggs figured there must be something alien and weird about the brown ones. In reality there's no discernibledifference in flavor or nutrition between brown and white eggs. The only difference is that brown eggs are laid by rust-red chickens, such as the Rhode Island Red, while white eggs come from white chickens, most notably the White Leghorn, which makes up about 90% of the North American egg-laying chicken population. So can't we all get along? Can chickens fly? Better than a penguin, emu, kagu, kiwi, and ostrich combined.However, not that well compared to most other birds. The world's record for a nonstop chicken flight is a little more than 230 yards. How long would chickens live if we didn't eat them? Broiler chickens, the ones we eat, are usually butchered after seven or eight weeks of life. If kept away from the frying pan and Colonel Sanders, they will live about eight years ~source used: "Just Curious, Jeeves" by Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 10-08-2003 07:35 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Albion: There are a variety of theories about how England got to be called "Albion" in the first place. The most likely one is that the Romans called it that from the Latin word "albus",meaning "white" - in reference to the famous white cliffs of Dover. But one really wild legend has it that a Syrian king had fifty daughters, the oldest named Albia. They were all married on the same day in what must have been one of the most massive weddings on record.But that was only the beginning. ]Every single one of the daughters took a knife to the neck of her husband on the wedding night,with the result that,come dawn, \there were fifty newly made widows. The king,understandably,took a dim view of the proceedings and banished all fifty of the girls.After much drifting about, they finally landed on the wild shores of England and named it after their leader,Albia.And there,as if to prove that they weren't indiscriminate man-haters,they took unto themselves new husbands from among the natives,"a lawless crew of devils," according to one account - but more to their liking than the men the king had chosen for them. This little story could be Chapter 1 in the History of the Women's Liberation Movement - but we hasten to add that it is just that,a story,a legend,a myth. ~source used: "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William Morris and Mary Morris~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 10-08-2003 10:10 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - What's the oldest-living creature on earth? The jury's still out on this one,as crack teams of gerontologists comb the planet in search of superlatives,but there are a few leading candidates.The Galapagos turtle, a perennial favorite,logs an estimated average life span of 90 years - impressive, but still a runner-up to the South Pacific's famously unfishy-tasting fish known as the orange roughy, which has been shown to live as long as 150 years. (How do we know this? It has a tiny bone in its ear that accumulates annual growth rings. Soon the prize for senescence could shift to a certain sea anemone found in the Bahamas that might be an incredible 2,100 years old, according to initial carbon-14 readings taken from the anemone's secreted horny exoskeleton. Increasing attention has been trained on several species of tube worms recently found in far-flung locations along thermal vents on the ocean floor. Marine biologists believe these tube worms are in excess of 200 years old, but unlike the orange roughy, they don't come with convenient onboard dating devices. Among mammals,humans take the prize: Assuming Methuselah was a case of biblical exaggeration, the oldest documented human was Jeanne Calment, a French woman who died in 1997 at the age of 122. It shouldn't be too surprising that plants,with their decidedly less complex physiology,win the age game hands down,thanks to several astonishingly decrepit individuals. Witness the "Rhizocarpon geographicum", a 12,000-year-old lichen growing in Alaska's Brooks Range; a creosote plant in California that's been dated to 11,700 years old; and - drumroll, please - the king's holly, a 40,000-year-old shrub recently discovered in a desolate gully in southwestern Tasmania.If you hear of anything older,please contact Willard Scott. ~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison?" by Hampton Sides~  |  IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 88 pages: 1  2  3  ...  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  ...  86  87  88

Printer-friendly view of this topic

Hop To: Select a Forum: Category: Operations -------------------- Digital Cinema Forum Film Handlers' Forum Large Format Forum Ground Level Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets Category: Community -------------------- Film-Yak Film Handlers' Movie Reviews The Afterlife Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon Category: Classified -------------------- Equipment and Supplies Wanted/For Sale Help Wanted/Seeking Employment Category: System -------------------- Software Beta Testing Forum

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.