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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 12-14-2005 06:29 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Does sun exposure clear up acne? Moderate sun exposure can indirectly help fight acne. During the summer the sun will cause you to sweat, clearing your pores. It will also dry out and tighten the skin, but don't think that laying out all summer is a good thing. You can suffer from over-exposure and then have serious skin problems including skin cancer. If you want a little in depth on acne, try these tid-bits on for size: Acne is caused by the bodies glands producing oil and mixing with dirt, dust, dead cells. Acne is not stress related, though is indirectly effected by stress. Acne is another one of the bodies ways to help keep itself healthy. Acne can be calmed by eliminating unhealthy elements such as nicotine, caffeine, grease, chemicals, overindulgence, etc. Acne can last a lifetime if you do not get rid of the above unhealthy elements. Those unhealthy elements are the "indirect" way that stress makes acne worse. Typically acne gets worse a day or so after the stress has started.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-15-2005 10:13 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - What is the difference between a fast and a slow metabolism? Your metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories to sustain life. Metabolism is relative to your muscle mass, so if you don't have much muscle, your body does not need to burn as many calories to maintain all of the processes (breathing, pumping blood, moving fluids hither and thither) necessary to sustain life. A faster metabolism (i.e. more muscle mass), will let you eat more calories each day without gaining weight, because all of the calories are used up trying to maintain the body and do not go towards long term storage in fat. Your metabolism is also affected by other things, such as physical activity (increases metabolism), eating smaller meals more frequently (increases metabolism), stress (decreases metabolism), good hydration (increases metabolism), etc.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-16-2005 05:47 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - When a man and a woman get married, can the man take the woman's last name? Forty-eight of the United States base their laws on British Common Law. In those states, the husband and wife may have any last names they want. However, Louisiana's laws are based on Nepolonic Code. In Louisiana, the wife and children must take the husband/father's last name. Nonetheless, there is probably no law preventing the husband from changing his last name to the wife's last name. For example, Jack White (nee' Gillis) of The White Stripes took his wife's last name instead of her taking his. Hawaii is similar to Louisiana, in that the wife and children must have the husband/father's last name.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-18-2005 03:38 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Is it disrespectful to attend a funeral not wearing black? According to the book 21st Century Etiquette: "Conservative attire is always best. Wearing all black is so past century, but bright colors are garish. Funerals are not the best venue to make any fashion statements. . ." We can only speak for the United States, but these days it is fine to wear colors other than black as long as the attire is tasteful and conservative. Here's a personal story we came across while writing this answer: "I had the misfortune of attending my Grandmother's funeral this past Wednesday and I did indeed wear bright pink. Let me clarify that, I wore a conservative black pencil skirt and a twinset with pink trim, my cape was pink and my gloves were black (it was at Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, DC, USA and outdoors and freezing). Nobody thought it was "garish" or "tacky" because pink was her favorite color which was a well known fact. I made sure my makeup was conservative and my usually long locks were in a tasteful updo. I actually received compliments later on for tastefully wearing bright pink (just a hint of) to a funeral. . . how funny." In some cultures it may be a sign of disrespect, so be aware of that and dress according to local customs/beliefs. Use good judgment. The above was a special case and the bright color was worn to honor the deceased. If you can't stand wearing black, choose another sombre color such as gray or at the very least stick with conservative attire. It is in no way disrespectful to not wear black in most cases. It is disrespectful to show up in an outfit one would usually wear "clubbing".  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-18-2005 04:10 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Will my fish get bigger if I put them in a larger tank? It depends on the species. Some fish grow all their lives (as well as some reptiles, such as crocodilians) and, theoretically, have no upper limit on their size. Their growth is primarily governed by the amount of space (the size of the tank) and their nutrition. Many people had the experience of having fresh-water angelfish remain size-stable until moved to a larger tank, where they would suddenly grow significantly. It is a well known occurrence that goldfish will get very large depending on the space available to them, to the extent of several times larger than what is traditionally considered a normal sized goldfish.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-19-2005 06:50 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Do we dream in color, or do we colorize dreams when we remember them? We actually dream in color, just like we remember places and things in color. If you don't remember dreaming in color, the reason may be pretty simple. We take color for granted. Everything is colorized. No more funky neon-green computer displays or black & white TVs. We see every blessed person, place, and thing these days in full array. That's the default, the expected, the routine, the norm. It's so the norm, who thinks about it? Dream backgrounds look a lot like the real world. There's not much departure there from what we already see all the time. So, we rush into a dream, our brains check the background or setting, and if the conclusion is "nothing new here" or "same paint job, different dream" we move on to focus energy on the dream's content. You won't remember much about what color shirt you wore, or anything else you already know. There's too much unusual and intriguing stuff going on in most dreams to bother with the mundane. The point is: There's really nothing unusual about seeing color in general, so it gets little attention in our dreams. Later, we ask ourselves if it was there at all. "I wonder if I dream in color. I think so, but then again.... maybe I'm dreaming."  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-20-2005 06:51 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Why do whales beach themselves? It is still not fully understood why whales beach themselves. There are many theories and proposed suggestions as to why they would do such a thing, but nothing thus far has been proven. One major theory that has surfaced in recent years is submarine sonar equipment. Supposedly, whales and other marine life are driven crazy by the pulses put out by sonar, and in whales, it causes a condition a lot like 'the bends'. The whales panic and flee. Often times they will be so badly affected by the pulse that they don't realize they are drawing in close to shore, and they'll just crash right into the beach. Other reasons may include sickness. They may lose their sense of orientation and wind up on the beach. They may be trying to escape a predator or predators. While there is no known creature in the oceans large enough or threatening enough to send dozens of whales fleeing, many larger whales are prey for Orcas (Killer Whales) and sometimes larger whales will beach themselves while attempting to flee pods of Orcas. There are many possible explanations to this phenomena, and these are only a few.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-21-2005 06:12 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - What exactly is "the missing link" supposed to be? Charles Darwin said at one point that as we unearth more and more fossils, we will find that the vast majority of historic life forms were transitional forms that will illuminate the map of how species differentiated over time. Darwinian evolution requires that intermediate forms must have existed and that the rise of complexity of species should be demonstrable from the incremental changes evident in the fossil records. Until there are fossil records of incremental change from some prototypical ancestor to a modern species, all of the "gaps" in the line are 'missing links.' If a scientist believes he has some skeletal evidence of a transition between any two species, it typically creates a new gap on either side of the transitional form. We currently don't have have any continuous incremental records of any possible species transitions. We say "possible" transition because even if we had a proposed series of intermediate forms, we could be wrong. There have been many mis-identified partial skeletons in the history of evolution research, and our transitional forms could turn out to be statistical outliers within a population, or just unique mutations that did not survive... or something else (e.g. a mule conceivably could be mistaken for a transitional form, but mules can't reproduce). Science really can not test history - it does not have the tools. All the researcher can do is state that his hypothesis is consistent with some collection of historical evidence. While plausible or perhaps even very likely, any deduction about historical mutations or their ancestors and descendents is necessarily speculative, not hard science.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-22-2005 07:08 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - How do birds have sex? Although most male birds have no external sex organs, the male does have two testes which become hundreds of times larger during the breeding season to produce sperm. The female's ovaries also become larger. In the males of species without a phallus, sperm is stored within the proctodeum compartment within the cloaca prior to copulation. During copulation, the female moves her tail to the side and the male either mounts the female from behind or moves very close to her. He moves the opening of his cloaca, or vent, close to hers, so that the sperm can enter the female's cloaca, in what is referred to as a cloacal kiss. This can happen very fast, sometimes in less than one second. The sperm is stored in the female's cloaca for anywhere from a week to a year, depending on the species of bird. Then, one by one, eggs will descend from the female's ovaries and become fertilized by the male's sperm, before being subsequently laid by the female. The eggs will then continue their development in the nest. Many waterfowl and some other birds, such as the ostrich and turkey, do possess a phallus. Except during copulation, it is hidden within the proctodeum compartment within the cloaca, just inside the vent. The avian phallus differs from the mammalian penis in several ways, most importantly in that it is purely a copulatory organ and is not used for dispelling urine. Some birds mate in the air, swifts probably do, and the raptors. Falcon females climb higher and higher and the males try to get above her. If one does, he settles on her back and they plummet towards the earth as they mate. Eagles and some other birds build nests high in the trees that are way too big for the purpose of raising young. The male starts the nest trying to impress the female with his handyman skills, then they both start working and add to it year after year. They use the big wide top as a mating area. Some birds, such as pigeons, geese, and Japanese cranes, remain 'married' for life. The male and female remain together for life or for a long period after mating and may produce offspring on a regular basis.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-23-2005 09:08 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Who decides how valuable art pieces are? Whoever buys it. Assuming you're talking about a modern capitalist society here, art is no different from anything else available on the free market. If no one will pay more than $200 for something, it's worth $200. The reason I can't glue some rocks together, call it a sculpture, and sell it for millions is that no one would care -- I'm just some random person who glued together ugly rocks. People will and often do pay millions for an original Picasso, though, because a) he's a known and admired artist, and b) his art is very good (if you're into that sort of thing). If, on the other hand, rock-gluing caught on as a trend, glued rock sculptures might become a fashionable art piece for a collector to own, and suddenly I could sell that sculpture for $2000. Same thing happens if someone finds my rock sculptures later and decides that they're fabulous, and tells everyone about it. (Even more so after I'm dead, of course, because then I can't make any more. Call it the "buy now, supplies limited!" factor.) Yes, this creates a loop: the value is how much people will pay for it, and people will only pay what they think the value is. That's economics, and it applies just as much to art as it does to the stock market or to currency exchange rates. In all those cases, the value of something is how much you think you could sell it for later; with art, there's just the additional factor of "would this look good on my wall?" As the other answers have noted, the artist can also set his own price on the work and consider that its value. However, I maintain that if he's willing to sell and no one will buy, the price he is set is greater than the piece's market value.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-24-2005 12:36 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - Is it true that the more often you cut your hair, the faster and longer it grows? No. Your hair has no way of knowing it is being cut. It's all perception: The shorter your hair is, the faster it seems to grow, since the difference between short and medium hair is more obvious than the difference between long and very long hair. Hair growth rates are not affected by being cut, BUT it is possible to grow some individual hairs longer by cutting them. HUH? I know, it doesn't make sense, but the reasoning behind it is this - hair which is brittle, damaged, and has split ends breaks off at shorter lengths than the hair is normally capable of growing. By cutting the split/damaged ends off and using proper hair care techniques you may be able to grow your hair slightly longer. It may not even be a noticeable amount, but in some cases it actually works that way.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-26-2005 08:22 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Do old computers get recycled? As long as the computer finds its way to a place that recycles computer hardware, then yes, old computers get recycled. The following excerpt from HP's hardware recycling service description is almost identical to that of Dell and a number of other manufacturers and recyclers. In most cases, the computers are assessed for their reusability first, so that the hardware may be reused by nonprofits or other public programs: "When it is determined that computer hardware has no value as a whole product, HP focuses on separating products into their key commodities such as steel, aluminum, copper, and plastics. HP then finds manufacturers that can use these commodities as raw materials in making new products. These processes and policies reduce the burden on the earth’s resources in two ways; by diverting old products from landfills and by displacing the need for raw materials in new product manufacturing."  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-27-2005 06:46 AM                        Rated G Useless fact - Do colors affect people's behavior? There is a large body of psychological research on this topic, which extends from intensity of color and light to the ability to feel color through the sense of touch. The following are tidbits from an excellent survey of previous research in Aspects of Color, by Frank Vodvarka: "People tend to become slightly disoriented in red light, as well as experience an increase in appetite. Coupled with the increase in adrenalin produced by yellow, saturated red-yellow combinations in light and paint are ideal for fast food places - and are used by virtually all of them. Red is also used in places that serve alcohol, although the tendency for this color to increase aggression may be less than desirable. Recent data (Porter and Mikellides, 1976) indicates that blue extends our sense of time; thus blue is a poor choice for children, whose sense of time is already extended. The data on temperature-perception is reliable; studies consistently indicate that a blue room is perceived to be three-four degrees cooler than a red one (Porter and Mikellides, 1976); and vice versa (Clark, 1975). Thus a 6-8 degree swing in perceived temperature is obtainable through painted surfaces alone." "Red light has been shown to enhance functions of the autonomic nervous system, evoking more tension, excitement, and hostility than the color blue (Gerard, 1957). For that matter, red light seems to produce anger and anxiety in infants and the mentally ill, and tests at Yale University indicated that the color red tended to detrimentally affect such mental activities as problem solving, decision making, and social conversation. Additionally, red light has been shown (in certain subjects) to increase bodily activity and extreme emotion, while blue light is physically calming." "Studies show that approximately 80% of the hiring decision is based on appearance factors, and that 65% of that involves clothing color. Brown and, to a large degree, green seem to inspire confidence, and at least some designers use this fact for intake interviews. Black and deep blue clothes suggest authority. And so forth."  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-28-2005 03:20 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - How did Bruce Lee die? Following the untimely death of Bruce Lee, there were many rumors and speculations about the cause of his death. These rumors ranged from murder to drug overdose. None of which were true. For the most part, the course of events on that fateful July day in 1973 can be pieced together. According to Lee's wife, Linda, Bruce met film producer Raymond Chow at 2 p.m. at home to discuss the making of Game of Death. They worked until 4 p.m., and then drove together to the home of Betty Tingpei, a Taiwanese actress who was to also have a leading role in the film. The three went over the script at Tingpei's home, and then Chow left to attend a dinner meeting. A short time later, Lee complained of a headache and Tingpei gave him a tablet of Equagesic a kind of super aspirin. Apart from that, Lee reportedly consumed nothing but a couple of soft drinks. At around 7:30 p.m., Lee lay down for a nap and was still asleep when Chow called to ask why he and Tingpei had not yet shown up for dinner as planned. The actress told Chow she could not wake Lee. The ensuing autopsy found traces of cannabis in Lee's stomach, but the significance of this discovery is debatable. Some believe the cannabis caused a chemical reaction that led to the cerebral edema, but the coroner's inquiry refutes this theory. In fact, one doctor was quoted as saying that the cannabis being in Lee's stomach was "no more significant than if Bruce had drunk a cup of tea that day." After a lengthy coroner's inquest in Hong Kong. A panel of medical experts eventually concluded that Bruce Lee had died from a hypersensitive reaction to a compound in the drug Equagesic. This hypersensitivity led to a swelling of the brain and resulted in Bruce Lee entering a deep coma from which he never awoke. The coroner declared himself satisfied with the finding, and so did Linda Lee, his wife.  |  IP: Logged Bob Maar (Maar stands for Maartini) Posts: 28608 From: New York City & Newport, RI Registered: Feb 2001 posted 12-29-2005 03:39 PM                        Rated G Useless fact - What causes warts? Warts are common and contagious, caused by a viral infection with one of the Human Papilloma virus strains. There are many types. Warts are usually passed by person to person contact, though you can also get them by coming into contact with something that was handled by somebody that has warts (like bedsheets and towels). They typically disappear after a few months but, if untreated, can last for years and can recur. A few Human Papilloma viruses are known to cause cancer. Possible treatments for warts include: * Freezing after which the wart and surrounding dead skin falls off by itself * Freezing and surgically removing the infected spot * Treatment with chemical compounds, usually salicylic acid * Laser treatment The following household remedy is recommended for three consecutive days: Put the "wart cells" in hot water with washing liquid. However it is difficult to prove whether the warts disappear because of the household remedy or by an immune reaction. A household remedy whose efficacy has been ratified by at least one study is placing a piece of duct tape (medical tape works too) over the affected area for a week at a time, rubbing off the dead wart cells with a pumice stone or emery board between tapings; this treatment is believed also to work as a result of an heightened immune response at the site of the wart. Particularly stubborn warts may need to be cut off completely, but this method should be used as a last resort, as it is both painful and can lead to infection.  |  IP: Logged

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