Useless Facts about anything

[Kimbers]

1. To "testify" is a word based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

2. If the U.S. government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented on July 16, 1969, make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles?

3. Michael Jordan made more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

[ramjet]

The gum on 3M Post-It notes was found by accident. 3M were actually trying to formulate a high strength adhesive.

[lrg_machine]

I thought smiles was the longest word as there is a mile between the first and last letters.

Nah! that would be Sages cos it takes ages to finish

"Startling" is a nine letter word you can take one letter from at a time leaving another word all the way down to one letter

Startling

Starting

Staring

String

Sting

Sing

Sin

In

I

Edited September 16, 2011 by lrg_machine

[basalte]

The longest palindrome is "evil rats on no star live ".Probably.

[Iconic Ride]

1. To "testify" is a word based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

2. If the U.S. government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented on July 16, 1969, make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles?

3. Michael Jordan made more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

Fact: When testicles are rapidly compressed, much swearing occurs.

Conjecture: Title 14 was hastily enacted to prevent contact with Apollo 11 (which returned to Earth on July 20th, 4 days later) and its "goodie bag" of little green men and their cheese, captured on the morning of the second day on the surface.

Fact: Malaysian factory workers can't jump.

[Petrol feet driven]

The microwave oven was invented after an accident in 1945, when American engineer Percy Spencer was standing in front of a magnetron (the device that produces the microwave radio signals in radar systems) and noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted.

[oneshot]

Is space a printable character?

Today's student question!

[rogerch]

Can be, if it's the same colour as the background, it appears as a space but would still qualify as a character.

(A trick I learned to fool proportionate spacing)

[Iconic Ride]

Since current understanding of "space" (here intended to specify a "null" position in a string of characters) is that "the vacuum" is actually teeming with "virtual particles" that come in and out of existence constantly, abeit for exceedingly short periods of time (from Scientific American: "...virtual particles are indeed real and have observable effects that physicists have devised ways of measuring. Their properties and consequences are well established and well understood consequences of quantum mechanics." ), the real "student question" ought to be, "How many virtual particles have I 'captured" ' when I print a 'space' character, and have I given them a permanent 'reality' by doing so?"

Or is the printed out paper merely a representative "substrate" of an ethereal quantum effect that resists permanent existence?

[rogerch]

[ramjet]

I remember starting The Claytons Thread. A thread where you could post something when you had nothing to post.

So, a gap is that space where nothing exists to provide a way to know when one word ends and another begins. We know a space to be nothing. A Claytons character, to put it another way. However, once we enter a space, or nothing, we have actually entered something as it does exist as a separator.

For instance, this very post contains 95 spaces or 95 nothings. If it contains them, they exist and are printable.

The conundrum continues.....

[Roger 912]

And now for something completely different.

NATURISM IS TAKING OFF

ASTRONOMY IS LOOKING UP

REINCARNATION IS MAKING A COMEBACK

[basalte]

In 1977 for a laugh, Elvis Presley entered an Elvis Impersonator contest, singing "Love Me Tender".

He came third.

[Iconic Ride]

In 1979 Elvis' twin brother Leonard filled in for him at the Las Vegas Sahara, lip-synching his way through the full two hour program. The show went so well that a paranoid Elvis arranged for Leonard to be wacked the following day by a local mafia hitman.

[Roger 912]

I was doing a bit of research on King Canute who was King of England and also of a couple of the Scandinavian countries at the same time around AD 997.

Wiki actually says that the name was actually spelt Cnut.

Cnut was the King who got his feet wet when his Royal Heritage was put to the test to see if he could stop the tide coming in, which history tells us he did not manage.

This episode must be where we get the lovely English expression of " you silly cnut"

[basalte]

My understanding is that he pulled the cunning stunt (sorry) to demonstrate his wisdom ; to emphasise to any sycophantic, obsequious courtiers that he was not divine and was subject to God`s Will as much as they were and therefore to imply that as an earthly ruler, he got to where he was by his own strengths and abilities (and wouldn`t be impressed by said grovelling) .

[Iconic Ride]

Or maybe he just wanted to wash his feet off.

[Roger 912]

I have just found out something.

Binary can be expressed 10 ways.

[Iconic Ride]

Or was it 01 ways? So much to know, so little time.

[Roger 912]

You know that look a Woman gets on her face when she wants sex. No neither do I.

[Roger 912]

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

[basalte]

1. No, but it sure helps.

2. Err...nope, work these days is definitely not necessary to support others if you have a sufficiently large share portfolio and good tax avoidance advice. Work is for the plebs.

3. Depends who they`re taking it from-Miss Ecclestone has a few quid spare for instance, but may have to give up having baths made in Mexical crystal - or they can find some North Sea gas in the meantime , or they can abandon a few very expensive programmes for weapons of mass destruction-as South Africa did and we have been strongly advised to do by our military top brass General Sir David Ramsbotham and Field Marshal Lord Carver . Thats £27 billion we could spend on kidney machines.

4. No-but that`s not what a sustainable growth strategy would want anyway. "Wealth" is a vague concept here-what it might well do is raise basic living standards.

5. No academic or sociological studies have yet shown that "half" of any of these groups thinks in those terms. I would however allege that 1% of the population is rich enough to tell the rest of us where to go-and is currently doing so. The 100 richest UK individuals own £335 billion between them. Now that really is the beginning of the end....for them, I hope.

[Roger 912]

Yup. Socialism is great - until they run out of other peoples money.

When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you will always have the support of Paul.

[basalte]

I agree 100% with you Roger-it IS Socialism and they HAVE run out of other people`s money.

But of course I am reasonably assuming that you mean all those free State handouts for the bankers to the tune of £830 billion- that`s definitely "Socialism" (for a few hundred people). Now they can libve their lives free from the anxiety of unemployment and failing to pay medical bills.

It`s red-blooded capitalist welfare cuts for the rest of us !

[Kimbers]

Quite happy for you guys to start a "Keynesian and Monetatist theory" thread (incidentalyy I studied this and Keynes Theory just doesn't work over the long term ), but lets get this thread back on track.