Today I Learned

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Discussion Overview

The thread invites participants to share daily lessons or interesting facts they have learned, encompassing a wide range of topics from personal experiences to historical facts, scientific insights, and humorous observations. The scope includes casual learning, trivia, and personal anecdotes.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants share personal insights, such as learning about the cleaning of hats or the time spent with medical specialists.
  • Others discuss historical techniques like "oyster veneering" and its revival, with one participant clarifying it is not a food-preparation method.
  • Mathematical observations are made regarding factorials, specifically that 23! has 23 digits, with some participants exploring the implications of this coincidence.
  • Several participants mention humorous or trivial facts, such as the number of microbes transferred in a kiss or the age of Cambridge University compared to the Aztecs.
  • Some participants express personal reflections on learning new words or concepts, such as "hyperacusis" and its effects on their music-making.
  • There are repeated claims about the impact of television on body image, with some participants sharing personal experiences related to this topic.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

The discussion features a variety of viewpoints and personal anecdotes, with no clear consensus on any specific topic. Participants express differing opinions and experiences, particularly regarding the effects of television and the historical context of various facts shared.

Contextual Notes

Some claims made in the discussion are based on personal experiences or anecdotal evidence, and there are instances of participants correcting or refining each other's statements without reaching a definitive conclusion.

Who May Find This Useful

Readers interested in casual learning, trivia, personal anecdotes, or exploring a variety of topics in a light-hearted manner may find this thread engaging.

  • #391
lisab said:
Today I learned that our own highly-esteemed BobG has been stalked by a can of garbanzo beans all his life.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...have-in-your-house.806405/page-2#post-5065793
Reminds me of a stench in my kitchen a few years back, that took me several weeks to discover the source of.
I had "top shelfed" a can of peas, obviously left behind from my one and only experiment with "renting out a spare room to a friend, acquaintance, someone I never want to hear from ever again*", as I would never buy a can of peas.
The "top shelf", being a location where I put things that I will not be using in this lifetime, as I have to get the ladder out.
Anyways, the can had rusted through, and slowly leaked its contents.
I no longer put canned goods on the top shelf.

*See: http://www.hulu.com/watch/13932
 
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  • #392
jim hardy said:
Today a wasp got into the house. I squirted him with first thing i could find , which happened to be Windex. The knockdown was immediate.
No stinky insecticide smell ...
I think squirted wasps are not smelly. I used to do that many times .
 
  • #393
I learned that when you can't see then you don't know what you are looking at.
 
  • #394
OmCheeto said:
Reminds me of a stench in my kitchen a few years back, that took me several weeks to discover the source of.
I had "top shelfed" a can of peas, obviously left behind from my one and only experiment with "renting out a spare room to a friend, acquaintance, someone I never want to hear from ever again*", as I would never buy a can of peas.
The "top shelf", being a location where I put things that I will not be using in this lifetime, as I have to get the ladder out.
Anyways, the can had rusted through, and slowly leaked its contents.
I no longer put canned goods on the top shelf.

*See: http://www.hulu.com/watch/13932
TIL whatever is on Om's top shelf is probably going to kill all of us someday.
 
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  • #395
Today I learned sex is a powerful motivator.
 
  • #396
I learned that the milky way is very big!

Playing a game (Elite Dangerous) that emulates the milky way with over 400 billion "star systems" and the possiblity to travel to them. To compensate for the vast distance FTL travel is possible. Trully remarkable the amount of space there is, and how big some stars are and specifically the amount of speed required to make traveling between them within a "game play" amount of time; the speed of light is a snail's pace for objects within the universe.

And then from there to think that the milky way is one galaxy amongst billions.
 
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  • #397
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  • #398
There must be as much space as there is time! :oldwink:
 
  • #399
Paul Almond passed away on the 9th.
He was the creator of a documentary series, the original being called; "Seven Up!".
I normally don't give much of a hoot when old people die, as that's what old people are supposed to do.
But, the "Up" series, really influenced my views of people, and I thought it merited mention.
 
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  • #400
OmCheeto said:
Paul Almond passed away on the 9th.
He was the creator of a documentary series, the original being called; "Seven Up!".
I normally don't give much of a hoot when old people die, as that's what old people are supposed to do.
But, the "Up" series, really influenced my views of people, and I thought it merited mention.
Thanks for mentioning that. Yes, I've seen quite a few of that series, including repeats. A British series, tracing the lives of a diminishing group of participants from age 7 until they reached age 56. I think we can all identify with the vicissitudes of fate we see distributed throughout the lives of these children.
 
  • #401
The mango is the national fruit of India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, and the national tree of Bangladesh.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango

I didn't know that. I found that out while looking for an article on Kesar Mangos.

I love mango juice and fresh mango fruit. I'm also fond of guava and papaya.
"Kesar" Mango is the queen of mangoes widely grown in the Gujarat state of India.It has a unique sweet taste. Kesar is characterised by its golden color with green overtones. The fruit is slightly smaller compared to the Alphonso variety. Savani farms offers very best of Kesar naturally ripened fruit products as "Queen Kesar"
Ref: https://www.savanifarms.com/
 
  • #402
I loved the Mango with dried danggit fish breakfast in the Philippines.
Almusal-20.jpg
 
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  • #403
nsaspook said:
I loved the Mango with dried danggit fish breakfast in the Philippines.

Do you eat the eyeballs?
 
  • #404
lisab said:
Do you eat the eyeballs?

Yes, everything but the larger bones. It's fried 'very' crispy so you add a little fish sauce to it and maybe some Bagoong alamang (shrimp paste) on green mango and rice. It keeps the mosquitoes away.
http://www.afodltd.com/images/afodpic/80-034.gif

I lived in Cabilao Bohol during the 80's with my wife (Her family owned a small farm there) . No utilities for fancy breakfast but it was about the most beautiful place in the world (Once the terrorists were eliminated).

cabilao loon bohol philippines
 
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  • #405
Ancient Egyptian Hangover Cure
http://news.discovery.com/history/a...als-ancient-egyptian-hangover-cure-150422.htm
Trying to ease a bad hangover? Wearing a necklace made from the leaves of a shrub called Alexandrian laurel would do the job, according to a newly translated Egyptian papyrus.

The “drunken headache cure” appears in a 1,900-year-old text written in Greek and was discovered during the ongoing effort to translate more than half a million scraps of papyrus known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
 
  • #406
Greg Bernhardt said:
Today I learned that "chasing the dragon" is slang for smoking heroin.

O-O
_

Aaah!
 
  • #407
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  • #408
Claim: GM, Ford, And Others Want to Make Working on Your Own Car Illegal
https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/gm-ford-others-want-working-own-car-illegal-160000229.html
What GM, and even tractor companies like John Deere, argues is that you, as an owner, don’t actually own your car. Rather, you’re sort of just borrowing it for an extended amount of time and paying for the rights to use the technology. If it sounds ridiculous— it is. But it gets even more ludicrous.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, John Deere argued that “letting people modify car computer systems will result in them pirating music through the on-board entertainment system.”

That’s right— pirating music. Through a tractor.
Seriously?
 
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  • #410
I can sort of understand sensitivity to hackers tweaking stuff and OEM getting sued when a hacked computer disables the brakes.

There's a lesson in the "Tower of Babel" story , it's about diminishing returns.
Look at the IT industry.
Does anyone think our tongues have not been confused ?

I'm keeping my '68 F100, thank you.
 
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  • #411
Today I learned that my bank balance was less than I expected because for some reason my electric bill was more than I had anticipated.
 
  • #412
Astronuc said:
Claim: GM, Ford, And Others Want to Make Working on Your Own Car Illegal
https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/gm-ford-others-want-working-own-car-illegal-160000229.html

Seriously?
Lexmark put chips with some kind of encrypted serial number on printer cartidges. Their printers would then only accept official cartridges. It got reverse engineered, of course, and they tried to sue under the "technical protection" clause of the DMCA - arguing that their serial number was a creative work protectable by copyright...
 
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  • #413
Today I learned a yellow fin tuna moves at 55 mph at top speed and a sailfish is as fast as a cheetah.
 
  • #414
Milkandcarrots said:
...a sailfish is as fast as a cheetah.
Not on land.
 
  • #415
Astronuc said:
Claim: GM, Ford, And Others Want to Make Working on Your Own Car Illegal
https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/gm-ford-others-want-working-own-car-illegal-160000229.html

Seriously?
I hope there's a statute of limitations on such things.
I reupholstered the seats on one of my cars back in 1980. :devil:

ps. I've been discussing William Shatner's $30 billion California water problem idea for about a week on Facebook.
Today, I ran across the last piece of the puzzle:
Om on FB said:
Summary of the below article*: The Carlsbad project will supply 7% of San Diego's water, at a construction cost of $1 billion.

So $14.3 billion would supply all their needs.
San Diego's population: 1.3 million
California's population: 38.8 million
Interpolated cost: $427 billion
Not counting the $50 billion annual cost of operation, which, if you can multiply :oldeyes: , comes out to $1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

*{below article}

I was going to start a thread about it here, but it had so many peculiar angles to it, that, I decided to wait.
 
  • #416
TILT I like to have a challenging job although it might be really hard for me...
 
  • #417
OmCheeto said:
ps. I've been discussing William Shatner's $30 billion California water problem idea for about a week on Facebook.
Today, I ran across the last piece of the puzzle:

I was going to start a thread about it here, but it had so many peculiar angles to it, that, I decided to wait.

If they just recycled waste water instead of dumping it into the ocean the amount they need to generate directly from sea water would be much less. It's less costly (but still expensive) to convert sewage into drinking water than salt-water.
 
  • #418
nsaspook said:
If they just recycled waste water instead of dumping it into the ocean the amount they need to generate directly from sea water would be much less. It's less costly (but still expensive) to convert sewage into drinking water than salt-water.


Someone named "puf..." started a thread on the topic very recently. Perhaps we should discuss this there. :angel:

[edit] But thanks for the link. I recorded all relevant data; "Frustratists: Politicians are stupid and don't listen to the optimists." :biggrin:
 
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  • #419
zoobyshoe said:
Milkandcarrots said:
...a sailfish is as fast as a cheetah.
Not on land.
Not in the sea either.

Today I learned Hubble was launched 25 years ago.
 
  • #420
Today I learned that no one has compiled statistics on the fastest fish on land.
 

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