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Author Topic: Useless Fact's Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 10-26-2003 02:43 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - What is the difference between pirate, a privateer, and buccaneer? There are several terms that one hears when discussing piracy. They are called buccaneers, privateers and pirates. Depending on the source they can all mean the same. Typically however they are categorized as such. A privateer was a ship under papers to a government or a company to perform specific tasks.The men who sailed on a privateer were also called privateers.The papers were usually referred to as a Marque of Letters.Some times these letters would give the captain to act in the behalf of a certain company or government to obtain slaves or perhaps bread fruit trees.Often the limits of the Marque were vague,leaving it up to the captain and crew to determine what they could take.Sometimes the privateers ignored the Marque and just did what they bloody well pleased. During times of war,some governments would commission privateers to seek out and attack the ships of hostile nations.This was especially true of England in this case,the Privateers would sail "on the account".That is they would loot,pillage,and plunder England's enemies for King and Country.For their efforts the Captain and crew would receive a portion of the plunder, between 1/5 and 1/2 the rest going to the crown.In return the Captain and crew had safe harbor and was protected by England. Henry Morgan was a privateer. Privateers often worked beyond the limits as detailed by their letter of Marque,often attacking neutral countries as well as hostile nations.Rarely would privateers attack their own country's ships.This would have been an act of high treason. Countries would often complain about the actions of privateers but most of the time England would ignore the complaints unless they were in the middle of delicate negotiations, in which case the head of privateer may have proven a small payment for what could be a large and generous reward. Buccaneers were French settlers in the Caribbean who used to barbecue or "smoke" wild boar and oxen.Boucanier literally means one who hunts wild pork.It is a term used to describe the pirates and privateers who had their roots in the Caribbean. Many of the Buccaneers found more profitable life styles hunting Spanish Doubloons instead of wild pigs.Of course you usually didn't run the risk of being hanged in irons when you hunted four legged pigs.Spain considered what privateers did as piracy so as far as they were concerned there was no difference between a pirate and a privateer. A pirate was a sea robber that for one reason or another looted under no jack (flag) other than Captain Death (the Jolly Roger) for the most part they organized their ship just as a privateering crew but with some exception. Many a privateer became pirates when they continued to stay on the account during a time when England decided to be at peace with Spain. Many pirates,particularly English pirates would not attack ship belonging to England.Their stated reasons were that they would never attack a British ship out of respect for the king or queen or because they were not at war with England, or they were pirates but not traitors,or some other line of BS. Their main reason,of course was that they hoped that by not attack British ships they would be given safe harbor or passage from the British.Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 10-28-2003 01:53 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why does scat stink? You'd think it would draw predators - an evolutionary disadvantage? Sure,ripe droppings can let a predator know that prey is in the neighborhood.But don't forget that smell works both ways: Herbivores,for instance,are extremely sensitive to the sulfur compounds present in carnivore droppings.If a deer happens to stumble across some fresh wolf spoor,it might rethink the day's foraging plans. The predator-prey thing,however,is an incidental issue here, for scat stench serves a far more important role in the wild. When it comes to communication, animals do it with dung.Scat is an almost universal mode of discourse among animals of the same species, transmitting information about territory, feeding strategy, and the like. "Most mammals other than people are far more inclined to use chemical cues to communicate than other kinds of displays," says Russ Mason of the Philadelphia-based Monell Chemical Senses Center, a kind of think tank of smell. Consider your dog on its morning walk. When it pauses to examine another dog's calling card, it's involved in a fairly detailed act of social intercourse,learning what competitors or eligible mates have been around,what's been on the menu - important stuff.It's as if it's reading the newspaper.Had the scat been scentless,your dog might have missed it altogether.And,really, what good is an uninformed pet? source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison?"~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 10-29-2003 09:12 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why do the hands on wristwatches in advertisements usually show the time as about 10:10? This particular arrangement of the hands is used because it nicely frames the name of the watch, which is usually in the upper half of the face, because it doesn't cover any writing in the lower half of the face, and because it is pleasingly symmetrical. ~source used: "Ever Wonder Why?" by Douglas B. Smith  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 10-29-2003 01:54 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why does looking at the sun make people sneeze? Those who've studied the issue believe it is because the cranial nerves run very close to one another inside the head.When a stimulus as bright as the sun comes into the optic nerve through the eye,it stimulates a reflex reaction in the nearby olfactory nerve,triggering a sneeze.A portion of the population will sneeze every time they look toward the sun;a larger portion can help a sneeze along with sunlight.It gets more bizarre: Some people begin sneezing from the stimulation of a full stomach; some, from combing their hair; others, from tweezing their eyebrows or cleaning their ears with a cotton swab. Aside from the dangers of a comb or Q-Tip injury,there's no apparent harm from this cross-nerve stimulus. ~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 11-11-2003 07:30 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Atlas holding up the world on his shoulders? It would be difficult to count the number of gazetteers that use as cover or endpaper a figure of the ancient Greek demigod Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders.Often the drawings are derived from a 1715 rendition of the famous 1696 map of the world done by the Italian cartographer Cassini. But that was not Atlas's punishment.Although accounts vary somewhat depending on which classic source is consulted,the punishment of Atlas,who in some accounts is identified as participating in a rebellion against Zeus,was to carry not the world but the vault of heaven on his back. In another version,Atlas,a king of enormous size, insults Perseus,who then tricks Atlas into gazing on the Gorgon's head, which turns Atlas into stone.Thereupon Atlas grows into a mountain,with heaven and all its stars resting on his shoulders. In any case,it's the sky, not the world,that Atlas was condemned to bear. ~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 11-11-2003 11:23 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - What is the average number of flowers used on a Rose Parade float? The number of flowers on a float in the annual Pasadena, California, Rose Parade varies depending on both the size and complexity of the float.A float will have anywhere from 30,000 to over 150,000 flowers.It takes 700 to 900 hours of labor to apply the flowers to each float. Float builders start with a custom-built chassis and engine. They construct a framework of steel and chicken wire that is sprayed with plastic.The process is called "cocooning" because the sprayed frame resembles a cocoon.The plastic is painted in the colors of the flowers that will be applied at the last minute.Every square inch of the entire float must be covered with flowers, leaves, seeds,or bark.Between Christmas and New Year's Day,an army of volunteers glues the flowers to the floats,sometimes one petal at a time. A single Rose Parade float is decorated with more flowers than an average florist will use in five years. Most floats are now built by professional companies and take almost a year to build. In 1902 the first football game associated with the Rose Parade saw Stanford University so mauled by the University of Michigan that Stanford quit after the third quarter when the score was 49-0. The following year, the Tournament of Roses committee decided to hold Roman-style chariot races instead of a football game. Football did not return until 13 years later. Each Rose Parade features over 300 horses and riders. A variety of horse breeds are represented, including Andalusians, Peruvian pasos, Bashkir curlies, golden palominos, and miniature horses. The first marching band was the 20-member Monrovia Town Band in the 1891 Rose Parade. Today 400-member marching bands are quite common. Over 200 bands compete to be one of the 22 bands participating in the parade. ~source used: "Do Fish Drink Water?" by Bill McLain~  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 11-12-2003 06:59 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - What were the worst plague and worst epidemic in human history? The Black Death that ran through China and across Europe in the 14th century is considered the worst plague in recorded history. Depending on the way the virus was contracted, 70 to 90 percent of those exposed to the plague died from it.During a five-year period,from 1347 to 1352,over 25 million people in Europe alone were wiped out. That was the worst "plague";however,it wasn't the worst "epidemic".What's the difference? The plague is a specific "bacterial" infection,but many of the worst epidemics have been caused by "viruses". The worst epidemic was not a plague but a flu that swept the world from 1918 to 1919.The first reported case was in Kansas in 1918,and from there it spread like wildfire.Eighteen months later,the virus vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared, after between 25 and 37 million people had died from the disease.At no other time in recorded history have so many people died from one affliction in so little time. ~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 11-12-2003 07:04 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - What is the origin of the "wave" at large sporting events? This phenomenon of adjoining sections of spectators standing up, raising their arms, and sitting back down in sequence, thus creating a wavelike appearance,is of recent origin.It suddenly appeared during a game one day in 1981 and caught on like wildfire.The man with the best claim to "inventing" it is George Henderson, aka "Krazy George." Krazy George is a professional cheerleader.He can be seen occasionally at NFL games in Houston and Minnesota banging his little drum and generally harassing the opposing teams. On October 15, 1981, he was working a playoff game between the Yankees and the Oakland A's in Oakland Coliseum. Midway through the game, he had a now famous inspiration.He went from section to section of the crowd asking them to stand up, yell,and sit down.The first time only the first few sections complied,then seven more,and by the third attempt the wave went right around the stadium and continued. Apparently,another man named Bill Bissell also claims to have created the wave independently at the University of Washington a scant two weeks after the nationally televised Oakland Coliseum game,as coincidental as that may sound.His version of the story is that at a 1981 Husky's football game,a former Washington cheerleader,Robb Weller (yes, the Robb Weller who cohosted the TV show "Entertainment Tonight" at the time),led a cheer where members of different sororities and fraternities would stand up and sit down in sequence. It caught on and kept going. The origin of the wave may be open for debate, but people at games seem to love it,and it has quickly spread across the country and around the world. ~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 11-12-2003 08:27 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why is it that an animal's eyes seem to glow when struck by light,while a human's don't? Our eyes *do* reflect light,as all flash photographers know - they just don't do it very well.The distinctive "eyeshine" given off by wolves and raccoons and crocodiles,among many other species,comes from the "tapetum lucidum",a mirrorlike layer of cells in or behind the retina.This structure is found mostly in nocturnal animals,for whom it serves as a kind of light amplifier.The retina captures some of the light that enters the eye,but some passes through.The tapetum lucidum bounces it back at the retina,giving the animal a second chance to "see" it. It's this ricocheting light that gives off the vaguely eerie glow we've come to associate with macabre children's tales - all those sinister pairs of eyes staring out from gloomy thickets. So why don't humans have this advantageous after-hours adaptation? Probably because we evolved as diurnal creatures in the sunny,hot climes of the African savanna,where too much light,rather than too little,was our special obstacle to overcome.Anyway,because the tapetum lucidum lies behind the retina,the light it reflects is slightly out of focus.Maybe you'd be willing to sacrifice a little visual clarity in exchange for better night vision; our species apparently wasn't. ~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 11-14-2003 05:43 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why does cooking gas smell like skunk? Pure natural gas has no odor, which is a major drawback from the perspective of safety, so gas companies add what they call an "odorant".The most common odorants are "tbiols", compounds that are present in lots of bad smelling things,from sewage to rotten eggs.And yes,thiols are the same chemicals that make skunk spray so unforgettably rank.The big difference,according to chemical ecologist William Wood of California's Humboldt State University, is that the gas company tends to use thiols that are gaseous at room temperature, whereas Pepe Le Pew favors thiols that remain in liquid form.The smells,at any rate,are quite similar."I'd classify them both as mephitic," says Wood. "Mephitic", by the way, derives from "mephitis",which Webster defines as "pestilential or foul exhalation from the earth" and which also is the name of the genus to which skunks belong. Case closed. ~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 11-14-2003 11:54 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why do cows lie down before it rains? Cows aren't the smartest creatures around.They couldn't care less if it were raining, snowing, or sunny.They don't plan whether to lie down according to the weather.Sometimes they will stand in the rain or lie down in the mud.Such is a cow's life. They lie down any time.Cows are docile,lazy animals.As ruminants,they must eat a lot of food,and they also have very slow digestive systems.Cows evolved as animals of who were preyed upon,and lying down was a good way to hide from the predators.Occasional lying down during the day affords them some leisurely digestion time out of the sight of predators.Their famous weather-predicting skills are purely an old wives'tale. ~source used: "Thoughts for thr Throne"~by Don Voorhees  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 11-16-2003 06:14 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Male emperor penguins sit on the eggs for months without food. How do they survive? They build up big fat reserves and slowly burn them off.At fifty or sixty pounds or more, emperors are the largest penguins,and their size means they can withstand cold better than smaller species and can "nest" the farthest south. They breed on the frozen Antarctic Sea,where temperatures may reach minus 60 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit.However,they do not actually build nests,but balance the eggs on top of their feet. The males have a special pouch that drops over the egg to protect it,so they can waddle around during the incubation period.They basically stand around for the whole two-month period.The males may lose 45 percent of their body weight while they fast.But first they gain large layers of blubber-like fat from a diet containing mostly fish and squid.Then they start to fast while they conduct what may be a two-month courtship. The single egg is laid in May,and the Incubation period begins. (The female goes to sea to feed and recuperate from egg-laying and returns to give the males a respite after the egg is hatched.) Luckily,the chicks depart in December,when they are two-thirds grown,leaving the rest of the Antarctic summer for building up body weight again. ~source used: "Book of Science Questions and Answers" by C. Carbone Ray  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 11-17-2003 07:19 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Did guys really wear tights in medieval times? Where'd they get tights, anyway? Aren't tights made out of nylon?! You watch too much TV. Tights on men of the Middle Ages were an invention of stage and screen, perhaps to give the actors something of the look of the age without going to the trouble of finding accurate costumes.Men, both the Anglo-Saxon pagans and the Christians of the early Middle Ages,sometimes wore leggings. These were made of linen or leather.They were either fitted (made to form to the leg) or they were bound by leather laces around the legs.Anglo-Saxons sometimes wrapped squares of leather around their legs with bindings, which gave a similar look. Loose trousers—short and long—were also worn by men.The Anglo- Saxons called them "brec", which is where our term "breeches" comes from. ~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 11-18-2003 09:34 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - the origin of "by and large": It's difficult to fix a precise meaning for "by and large" since it means "generally speaking" or "on the whole".But originally the phrase had a very precise meaning in the language of sailors.In the days of sailing ships, when a vessel was running close-hauled,the man at the helm would usually be given one of two orders,"full and by" or "by and large".The first command, used with a skillful helmsman, meant "sail as close to the wind as you can." The second,"by and large", meant "sail slightly off the wind" and was given to the inexperienced helmsman since this tack would leave him in less danger of being "taken aback." So the phrase "by and large" has come to indicate imprecise generalities. A person speaking "by and large" about a subject can be considered to be something less than entirely expert on it. ~source used: "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 11-19-2003 08:22 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - How and when are organisms considered members of the same species? The traditional answer to this question is the one we learned in high school:If two organisms can mate and produce fertile offspring,then they're members of the same species.Most of us were taught that varieties within a species (say, two different kinds of ground squirrels) can always reproduce,but an organism cannot leap across the great divide and successfully mate beyond their kith and kin.A tiger and a lion can mate,but the resulting "liger" is, like a mule, sterile. So far,so good.The problem is, this old-fashioned,reproductively based definition of what constitutes a species is full of holes. The natural world affords us endless examples that blur or outright violate this tidy conceptual paradigm.Take,for example, the race-runner lizards of the American Southwestwhich reproduce "parthenogenically"— that is, the females clone themselves without any need for males whatsoever.Or for that matter,any of the thousands of plants and organisms, like blue-green algae, that reproduce unisexually.Then,too, there are many varieties of birds and fish that are known to mate successfully outside their own species—outside their own genus,even."Ducks are especially promiscuous," notes Northwestern University's David L. Hull,a specialist on the philosophy of evolutionary biology. "They seem to get a little bored with their own species and blithely ignore the boundaries we've set for them." The fact is, although common sense tells us that the old concept works in most cases, professional taxonomists have long since stopped using it as the crucial criterion for defining a species. Today's classifiers, who like to call themselves"phylogenetic systematists",have come a long,long way from the musty days of Audubon and Linnaeus. Steeped in Darwinian theory and armed with powerful computers that analyze the DNA strands of sample plants and animals,modern taxonomists are less interested in who's mating with whom, and more impressed by what they call"evolutionary lineages" - that is,which ancestor did the species evolve from,and how is it related to other species,both living and extinct,in the great family tree of biological diversity? Scientists today study an organism's genetic makeup and look for all sorts of esoteric connections, or "clusters". It's on the basis of these minute determinations that new species are declared and the great scorecard of Earth's life is kept up-to-date. ~source used: "Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison" by Hampton Sides  |  IP: Logged

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