Fact O' The Day

[Spartan]

Fact of the moment...I'm very dirty, very tired, and a little horny....

[Krandall]

'Smarter children are more likely to develop alcoholism as adults.'

Researchers at the University of Glasgow studied intelligence assessments of over 8,000 subjects (taken when they were 10 years old) and compared those scores with the drinking behaviors they'd developed by the age of 30. For every 15-point increase in IQ, the likelihood of adult drinking problems increased 1.38 times for women and 1.17 times for men.

[Colorado700R]

Fact of the moment...I'm very dirty, very tired, and a little horny....

[Spartan]

I thought I erased all traces of that picture

[dragonz]

 

[Krandall]

'32% of Americans believe in ghosts.'

Oddly, the propensity to believe in ghosts is not the same as the likelihood of believing in haunted houses (in the same poll, 37% of Americans responded that they believed in haunted houses). Both beliefs decrease with age (more than half of 18- to 29-year-olds believe that a place can be haunted) and with political ideology (conservatives being more skeptical on both subjects than liberals).

[Peelz]

not this guy. 

[Krandall]

'One third of city traffic is composed of motorists trying to park.'


In a study conducted by Donald Shoup in Los Angeles, the average time a driver spent looking for parking was 3.3 minutes -- which, just for the 15-block area addressed by the study, would equal nearly a million vehicle miles driven over the course of the year. Shoup theorizes that the allure of curb parking for such a lower cost than parking at a garage is responsible for all the time spent looking for street parking.

[Krandall]

'The prototype kilogram is stored in a vault in Sevres, France.'


The International System of Units dates back to just after the French Revolution. The kilogram was then defined as the mass of one liter of water. Officially, though, a kilogram is equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram, a 130-year-old metal alloy cylinder referred to as the IPK. The IPK sits in a safe secured by three locks, inside a vault, in the basement of an International Bureau of Weights and Measures facility outside Paris.

[Colorado700R]

drill a hole in and fill it with lead.  Peelz buisness would go to chit

[Peelz]

drill a hole in and fill it with lead.  Peelz buisness would go to chit

[Krandall]

'Spartan women enjoyed more rights than any other women in the ancient world.'


It might come as a surprise that in the war state of Sparta, women were unusually valued in comparison with other populations of the ancient world. They were permitted to own land, considered citizens (though with no say in government) and allowed to divorce and remarry while still retaining their property. Aristotle indicated that women owned 2/5 of the land in Sparta.



pats a woman?

[Spartan]

[Krandall]

Cooking with microwaves was discovered accidentally.'


In 1945, an American inventor named Percy LeBaron Spencer was building radar components for Raytheon. While working on these components (vacuum tubes called magnetrons), he noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had started melting. Spencer then tested whether the microwave signals from the magnetron were responsible, and the food he chose to test on -- the first food intentionally cooked via microwave -- was, fittingly enough, popcorn.

[Peelz]

Cooking with microwaves was discovered accidentally.'


In 1945, an American inventor named Percy LeBaron Spencer was building radar components for Raytheon. While working on these components (vacuum tubes called magnetrons), he noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had started melting. Spencer then tested whether the microwave signals from the magnetron were responsible, and the food he chose to test on -- the first food intentionally cooked via microwave -- was, fittingly enough, popcorn.

Dad always would tell me that story. Him and his buddies worked on the Ginormous radar on top of the Aircraft carriers in the 60's. He would talk about how it would do weird stuff.