It’s Another Funny Factoid Friday, Here Are Eighteen Universal Truths

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

It’s another Friday and time for a few more of what I call factoids, although this list is entitled Universal Truths.

That does not mean that every one of them applies to everyone, but from personal experience I can vouch for the accuracy of quite a lot of them.

Enjoy!



1) Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.



2) At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.



3) One of the most awkward things that can happen in a bar is when your pint-to-toilet cycle gets synchronized with a complete stranger.



4) You've never quite sure whether it's ok to eat green crisps.



5) Everyone who grew up in the 80's has entered the digits 55378008 into a calculator.



6) Reading when you're drunk is horrible.



7) Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly.




8) You're never quite sure whether it's against the law or not to have a fire in your back garden.



10) Nobody ever dares make cup-a-soup in a bowl.



11) You never know where to look when eating a banana.



12) Its impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat.



13) Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly.



14) Rummaging in an overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.



15) You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses.



16) Everyone always remembers the day a dog ran into your school.



17) The most embarrassing thing you can do as schoolchild is to call your teacher mum or dad.



18) The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first given opportunity.


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Do You Know…. Yes, It’s Another Flipping Fun Filled Factoid Friday!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

It’s Friday again and what better day to indulge in a little more factoid fun. Start your weekend off full of useless knowledge that you can impress and bore your friends with.

Enjoy!

Do you know….

That 80 percent of Harvard students graduate with honors

That the chances that a burglary in the US will be solved are 1 in 7

That the government owns one third of all the land in the US

That they put Braille dots on the keypad of the drive-up ATM.  Why?

That James Buchanan was the only US President to remain a bachelor

That the only first lady to carry a loaded revolver was Eleanor Roosevelt

That the only US President to win a Pulitzer was John F. Kennedy, for "Profiles in Courage"

That the only US President to be awarded a patent was Abraham Lincoln, for a system of buoying vessels over shoals

That the US President who discovered a new proof for The Pythagorean Theorem was Jimmy Carter  (I think is was hidden under the oval office carpet)

That cigarettes sold in gas stations when smoking is prohibited there, duh?

What happens if you are in a vehicle going the speed of light and you turn on the headlights?

That honey is the only food that does not spoil

That a Hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards

That Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles or snakes

Why is the word “lisp” spelled with all the letters that people with that affliction cannot pronounce?

That a pig is the only animal besides human that can get sunburn

That ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water

That an eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it

That in the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees

That for some strange reason Americans drive on parkways and park on driveways.

That polar bears are left-handed

Why is “dyslexic” such a difficult word to spell?

That when you're driving and looking for an address, you turn down the volume on the radio

That Eskimos never gamble  -  I bet you didn’t know that.

That the world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910

That the youngest pope was 11 years old

That Mark Twain didn't graduate from elementary school

That proportional to their weight, men are stronger than horses

That when you transport something by car, it's called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship, it's called cargo

That Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner

What would happen if you tied buttered toast to the back of a cat and dropped it from a height?

That your nose and ears never stop growing

Why isn't “phonetic” spelled the way it sounds?

That Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets combined  -  Uranus!  -  No, Jupiter.

That they have square watermelons in Japan ... they stack better

That Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation

Why your nose runs and your feet smell?

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The Stupidest Fish In The River

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Most of the time, about 90 percent, in this blob we look at stupid humans and the various ways we interact with them and they themselves interact with society.

Sometimes these incidents have involved animals and other species. But animals and the rest can be dumb in their own right and do dumb things.

A while ago one of my posts, “Care To Dance”, featured, let’s say a less than successful but very funny fisherman called Bill Dance from Tennessee

If Bill had just gone to the Wabash River in Indiana he might have been a lot more successful with his catch!

Have a look at the video and you’ll see what I mean.

Enjoy!

Hidden In Plain Sight

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”




I always remember during the Vietnam War how the Viet Cong soldiers were able to hide themselves in plain sight of the South Vietnamese and US forces. In one remarkable incident a Viet Cong intelligence officer rented a house beside the local police station. Then there were the remarkable tunnels of Chu Chi. Remarkable for two things, one, because of their vast size and the number of enemy soldiers that they provided a base for; and two, because of the unbelievable courage of the Tunnel Rats whose unenviable job it was to enter this tunnel complex and search out the enemy. Remarkable indeed.  


On a much lighter note, I’m sure you are all very aware of the saying, “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”


The strange thing is that although our own nose is constantly in view of our eyes we never see it, because somehow our brain filters this image out of our vision as unimportant, or rather, unnecessary. Good job too for some people. I know a couple of dudes with enormous honkers! If their noses were in their vision they wouldn’t see anything else.


Joking aside, however, this got me thinking as to how much other information does our brain filter out of our vision equation without letting us know. How much do we not see although it is right in front of us? It can be a rather scary thought.


I have always been particular about what I write and I always check to see that everything is spelled okay and sentences make sense. (Proof reading you own work however is one of the hardest things to do, because you know what you meant to write an after a while loss of a little concentration can lead to mistakes.)


But it turns out I have just been wasting my time because, spell checkers be damned, apparently they aren’t even necessary. I guess some of you will already have seen this piece about how the mind works when reading. If you haven’t you’re in for a bit of a surprise.


Can you read this:


Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.



Which written normally is this:


According to a researcher (sic) at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.

During a period in my life when I was in the construction business I once drew out a plan and asked the carpenters working for me to assemble it out of some 2 x2 timber that was lying around. Strangely none of them could manage it, but a couple of them puzzled over it for quite a while. The drawing I gave them was much more detailed than this with measurements and fitting instructions, but the finished object was to look like this. Officially it is called a Penrose triangle.

Then there are loads of very interesting and amusing optical illusions based on the eye-to-brain ability to process information. One of my favorites is this Einstein rotating head. Is it hollow or is it protruding? Depends how your brain processes what it sees.

There is also the Ballerina illusion which is interesting. If you stare at a girl’s feet she appears to be swiveling back and forth. But if you look at her head she appears to be rotating 360 degrees. Try it out. Weird!

And there’s another spinning dancing girl who, if the right side of your brain is dominant appears to be rotating clockwise, and if the left side of your brain is dominant she appears to be rotating anti-clockwise. To make things even more weird if you stare at it for a little while you can make her change direction. Duh…

But by far the weirdest thing of all is our ability to concentrate and count baseball passes. I hope you haven’t seen this one before, but even if you have, take another go at it. I won’t tell you the answer and don’t read the rest of this blog post without viewing the video, or you will spoil the whole thing for yourself.

It explains it on the video too, but there is a team in black and a team in white and what you must try to do is count the number passes the white players make to each other and ignore what’s happening with the team in black. It’s quite fast and there is a lot of movement so you do have to concentrate. Also, if you happen to be on a slow internet connection let the whole video load before you play it.

Basket ball count test

So how did you do?

Did you get the correct number of passes?

Actually I’m not going to say any more about this just now, but I’ll return to the subject in a few days hopefully, because there is an interesting and slightly disturbing question that arises from all this.

Meantime, if you feel like it let me know how you got on with the basket ball count.

And rmeemebr trohw aawy that slpel ccehekr.