Fact Of The Day

[ER]

This is May Day, the traditional beginning of summer across much of Europe.

[BoyScoutKevin]

The 8 American companies that--this according to Michael Grunwald's book "The New New Deal"--that will lead us into a new and--hopefully--better future are . . .

apple -- cisco -- disney -- ebay -- facebook -- google -- intel -- twitter.

As for the other . . . ?

For anybody who has children, I'm not telling you what you don't already know, but . . .

1.) If I listen to their music, it helps me to understand how they think. Though, what does that say about our generation and our music, except, we had better music.

2.) I know better, but it is a reminder that children are not homogenuous, but are as heterogenuous as any other group out there.

3. Boys vs. girls

a.) I'd like to know the percentage of boys to girls that listen to the station. I bet it is more girls than boys, but with the number of boys who call in and/or win the on-air contests, I think the number of boys may be increasing.

b.) What do boys listen to, with the boy bands and boy singers, most of the music is seemingly geared toward girls, but while they are too cool to admit it, if you hold their little feet to the fire, they'll admit they'll listen to the same music as girls. And with the girl singers and now girl bands out there, boys can develop the same type of crush, that girls develop.

c.) No wonder women are beating our male butts. When girls call in, they'll be with some of their friends. Developing support groups at an early age. But, most boys, when they call in, will be by themselves.

d.) It is a reminder of something I hate. Until they reach puberty, alot of boys sound smiliar to girls, and with the increasing number of unisex names, I can't tell whether I'm listening to a boy or a girl. I hate that.

Next time: "It is all fun and board games till someone dies."

[ER]

But for a typo on a Mississippi birth certificate, Oprah would, as intended, have borne the Biblical name Orpah.

[Leah]

Since 1995, May is celebrated as the National Masturbation Month.

A comparative study on men who watch porn and men who don't watch porn could not be completed because the researchers couldn't find any men who had never watched porn.

[ER]

Fact: Some geographers rank India as a continent, not a subcontinent.

Fact: Some geographers rate Australia as an island instead of a continent.

Fact: Some geographers consider the land between the Arabian and Anatolian peninsulas to be Africa, not Asia.

Conjecture: At the end of the night geographers usually go home alone.

[LilCerberus]

Fact: Some geographers rank India as a continent, not a subcontinent.

Fact: Some geographers rate Australia as an island instead of a continent.

Fact: Some geographers consider the land between the Arabian and Anatolian peninsulas to be Africa, not Asia.

Conjecture: At the end of the night geographers usually go home alone.

Gee... And I was confused enough by the whole Eur-Asia thing...

[Leah]

FACT: Dubai has four new cop cars: An Aston Martin One-77, Bentley Continental GT, Ferrari FF, Lamborghini Aventador, and a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, all very fast cars, ONLY FOR F**KING SHOW!!!!!!!!!! ಠ_ಠ
Here's the proof:
Lambo-https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/485452_521524521216141_1603398927_n.jpg
Aston Martin-https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/298227_521884507846809_1122630445_n.jpg
Mercedes-https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/944725_521980737837186_1245355162_n.png
Ferrari-http://www.drivearabia.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Ferrari-FF-Dubai-Police-3-450x337.jpg
Bentley-http://images.thecarconnection.com/lrg/bentley-continental-gt-police-car--image-dubai-police_100426320_l.jpg

[ER]

Pedra Furada, Brazil has a site that shows human occupation of the Americas dates to perhaps as early as 48,000 years before present. That fact leads to the question: if occupation so far south was in effect that early, what does that say about the possible dates of human presence in the far north?

[LilCerberus]

The Richmond PD did something similar recently as a ploy to get out giving their officers raises.

FACT: Dubai has four new cop cars: An Aston Martin One-77, Bentley Continental GT, Ferrari FF, Lamborghini Aventador, and a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, all very fast cars, ONLY FOR F**KING SHOW!!!!!!!!!! ಠ_ಠ
Here's the proof:
Lambo-https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/485452_521524521216141_1603398927_n.jpg
Aston Martin-https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/298227_521884507846809_1122630445_n.jpg
Mercedes-https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/944725_521980737837186_1245355162_n.png
Ferrari-http://www.drivearabia.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Ferrari-FF-Dubai-Police-3-450x337.jpg
Bentley-http://images.thecarconnection.com/lrg/bentley-continental-gt-police-car--image-dubai-police_100426320_l.jpg

[BoyScoutKevin]

Fact:

the axe -- the bomb -- the poison -- the poker -- the shillelagh -- the syringe

were just some of the weapons used in the original version of Clue, or, as it is called in the U.K., Cluedo. Where the game actually got its start.

They make the weapons used in the newest version of Clue look almost mundane.

My favorite is the poker. For when you get hit by a poker, you know you've been hit. Just two problems: it is unwieldy, because it is unbalanced, and it is heavy as heck. So, choke up on it with a 2-handed grip and swing it like you would with a baseball bat.

There is also a version of Clue that features the Disney characters and takes place in the Haunted Mansion. The game is much the same, except no one is killed, but--instead--one of the characters is scared by one of the six ghosts inhabiting one of the nine rooms in the mansion.

There are also Disney variants of the following . . .

Candyland -- Chutes and Ladders -- Connect 4 -- The Game of Life -- Operation -- Pictionary -- Rubik's Cube -- Sorry -- Trivial Pursuit -- and Monopoly.

The last comes in Pixar, theme parks, and villains edition.

But, of course, the granddaddy of all variant boardgames is Monopoly, which comes in multiple versions of . . .

Animals -- Automobiles -- Cities -- Companies -- Films -- Sports -- States -- TV Shows -- Universities -- and Foreign Cities and Countries.

Next time: Christmas comes early this year. The 12 Days of Christmas.

[ER]

Only nine percent of the world's people own an automobile.

[LilCerberus]

The original GI Joe was a World War 1 carrier pigeon.

[ER]

Medieval western Europeans were roughly the same height as modern Europeans, circa 5'9" for men, 5'5" for women, with 6' men about as common in France and Britain a thousand years ago as nowadays. It was during the Industrial Age, when people crowded into cities and poor nutrition followed, that average height declined.

Medieval skeletons also show teeth far less impacted by decay than is typical of those peoples' 21st century descendants. A low-sugar diet is believed to be the cause.

Also bathing was really not uncommon throughout much of the Middle Ages, with there being more bathhouses in Chaucer's London than in Victoria's. Clean clothes were viewed as so necessary to life that one of the most common professions for women was laundress, with nearly everyone who could afford it making weekly use of laundress' services. One means for recruiting soldiers to your army was to hire the most skilled laundresses, and then advertising that fact among viable mercenaries. (And, no, these did not seem to be prostitutes since they were often widows quite on in years, and prostitution was otherwise openly practiced...) There was more soap per capita produced in Richard the Lionheart's England than in the time of Jane Austen.

A good mythbusting book on all this is If Walls Could Talk, by Lucy Worsley.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Christmas comes early this year.

On the 1st day of Christmas . . .
The Weird and the Wonderful

ella fitzgerald's
santa claus got stuck in my chimney

dora bryan's
all i want for christmas is a beatle

spinal tap's
christmas with the devil

bob and doug mckenzie's
the twelve days of christmas

stan freberg's
green chri$tma$

the chipmunks'
chipmunk song

spike jones and his city slickers'
all i want for christmas is my two front teeth

fountain of wayne's
i want an alien for christmas

stan freberg's
nuttin' for christmas

tom lehrer's
christmas carol

These are, and most of the upcoming ones, will be from Joey Green's "Weird and Wonderful Christmas."

Next time: the 2nd day of Christmas

[Umaril Has Returned]

Ich bin mit Deutsch Wurzeln amerikanischer  ( I am German with American roots) and my grandmother used to tell me this little interesting fact about Anglo-Saxons:

The Sachsen is the knife that was carried by the Northwestern German tribes, including the Nederlanders and the Danish. This is where the name "Saxon" came from.

Now, when they settled along the banks of the Thames river, they stayed because the fishing was great, There, they were known as the Angel-Sachsen, "Angeln" being the German word for fishing. They also brought a great deal of English to Roman Brittania at the time that the Celtic language Brythonic was spoken, as well as Latin.

Looking on the relative similarity of some of the German and English words, it's got some credibility to it. Angel-Sachsen=Anglo-Saxon.