Today I Learned

[pinball1970]

TIL: Today I listened to a piece of music and I thought: "Sounds like Beethoven but isn't Beethoven." I found Otto Nicolai (symphony in D major), a German composer in the first half of the 19th century who founded the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Life isn't fair. We (Germans) gave Austria Mozart, Beethoven, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and I do not need to mention whom they gave us.

You have Bach and Gauss!

Einstein was born in Ulm part of Germany. So, is that one two three?
We have Shakespeare and Tolkien so have you there.

 

[fresh_42]

You have Bach and Gauss!

A propos musical exchange. I listen to Sir Cliff Richard's German version of "Lucky Lips" these days. Boy, that lyrics would cause a giant s**tstorm today. What a sexist text! And he wasn't alone. Those texts in the 60s regardless of whether English or German were often very borderline.

DYK that the Beatles recorded songs in German, too?

 

[pinball1970]

A propos musical exchange. I listen to Sir Cliff Richard's German version of "Lucky Lips" these days. Boy, that lyrics would cause a giant s**tstorm today. What a sexist text! And he wasn't alone. Those texts in the 60s regardless of whether English or German were often very borderline.

DYK that the Beatles recorded songs in German, too?

Yeah the Beatles loved Germany, cut their teeth in Hamburg I think.

 

[pinball1970]

Yeah the Beatles loved Germany, cut their teeth in Hamburg I think.

 

[fresh_42]

Yeah the Beatles loved Germany, cut their teeth in Hamburg I think.

Must be a Liverpool thing.

 

[pinball1970]

A propos musical exchange. I listen to Sir Cliff Richard's German version of "Lucky Lips" these days. Boy, that lyrics would cause a giant s**tstorm today. What a sexist text! And he wasn't alone. Those texts in the 60s regardless of whether English or German were often very borderline.

DYK that the Beatles recorded songs in German, too?

Cliff Richard? I'll check it out.

I think the Beatles did a few in German.

 

[fresh_42]

Cliff Richard? I'll it out.

I think the Beatles did a few in German.

These are the 2 I know about, too. There could be some more during their time in Hamburg that weren't recorded. I should have an album with Pete Best somewhere in the basement.

I do not recognize the voice of that one ...

... only the slight English accent.

 

[Borg]

TIL that caesarean sections have been performed for thousands of years.

The surgery has been performed at least as far back as 715 BC following the death of the mother, with the baby occasionally surviving... Descriptions of mothers surviving date back to 1500 AD.

 

[gmax137]

I always thought it was named after Julius Ceasar but the wiki link (thanks @Borg ) shows that's not true. TIL...

 

[gmax137]

I think the Beatles did a few in German.

I picked up this CD somewhere. Take a look at the Liner Notes for the songs auf Deutsch

 

[fresh_42]

TIL, but I am not convinced, yet, what the second most mammal species after humans is.

Guesses?

 

[Bystander]

Guesses?

Rats?

 

[fresh_42]

Rats?

No. I even thought about cattle or pigs. But it is neither of them according to that documentary I watch.

Hint: we share the menopause with them! This is extremely rare. Females usually die before this happens.

 

[DaveE]

Bats?

 

[gmax137]

When I google it, I get "rats."

 

[fresh_42]

It was about orcas. I am skeptical, too. However, who knows anything about the worldwide population of orcas? The oceans cover almost three times the area of land.

Rats definitely do not have menopause. I wonder whether elephants have.

 

[BillTre]

what the second most mammal species after humans is.

By numbers or by mass?
Usually, the little things win both categories just because there so many of them. This makes me think mice would be the winners.
Ants for example may have the most biomass of animals.

I have seen things in the last few years about how the wild world is giving way to the domesticated world.
Human impact on wild habitat is extensive.

 

[gmax137]

The wiki on orcas says the population is 50,000, minimum. OK, it doesn't list the maximum. But 50,000 is a long way from 7 billion. Am I missing something here?

 

[fresh_42]

The wiki on orcas says the population is 50,000, minimum. OK, it doesn't list the maximum. But 50,000 is a long way from 7 billion. Am I missing something here?

Maybe the ocean biologists in that documentary had a bit of a biased view. 50,000 seems pretty low given that they live almost everywhere and the ocean is three times the area of land. 50,000 means around about 5,000 to 10,000 groups. I don't believe this number either.

 

[pinball1970]

T.i.l. 10,000 scientific papers retracted last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point

 

[fresh_42]

T.i.l. 10,000 scientific papers retracted last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point

Not really a surprise. It is the inevitable consequence of the introduction of papers per time as the only valid unit of science and justification for grants. Publish or perish - more than ever.

 

[BillTre]

 

[mfb]

Orcas as second-most common mammal species would be really weird. That minimum of 50,000 might be too low, but it won't be too low by several orders of magnitude. There are around 1.5 billion cows, 1.2 billion sheep and 700 million cats.

 

[pinball1970]

TIL the States get an eclipse in April https://phys.org/news/2024-02-countdown-april-total-solar-eclipse.html

 

[pinball1970]

It was about orcas. I am skeptical, too. However, who knows anything about the worldwide population of orcas? The oceans cover almost three times the area of land.

Rats definitely do not have menopause. I wonder whether elephants have.

I got rats also. About 10M in the UK, estimate. I thought there would be more based on sayings/old wives tales in my neck of the woods. "More rats than people" "You are never more than 6 feet from a rat."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20716625

 

[sbrothy]

Today I learned, or rather rediscovered this, admittedly factually wrong, qoute by Orson Welles:

The Borgia Dynasty gave us 30 years of constant war, power play, secret assainations, nepotism and general mayhem. This resulted in the Renaissance, Michelangelo and a plethora of high-quality art.

Meanwhile (and here it appearently breaks down), Switzerland prospered in peace, democrazy and what was the result?

The cuckoo clock.

Apochryphal and wrong. Switzerland, I think, wasn't democratic and the cuckoo-clock was invented elsewhere.

Nevertheless, I still find it funny.

 

[fresh_42]

Orcas as second-most common mammal species would be really weird. That minimum of 50,000 might be too low, but it won't be too low by several orders of magnitude. There are around 1.5 billion cows, 1.2 billion sheep and 700 million cats.

I said I had my doubts, too. On the other hand, I have read recently that 100,000 dolphins per year are killed by humans. So you need a considerably higher (orders of magnitude higher) population of dolphins to achieve this without extinguishing them.

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that Facebook bans photos of a 25,000-year-old sculpture as pornography. LOL.

 

[sbrothy]

TIL that Facebook bans photos of a 25,000-year-old sculpture as pornography. LOL.

That's not strange at all. That figure is so hot I can easily imagine it making teenagers do crazy things. Then again I can imagine teenagers do crazy things without much incentive at all. :)

 

[Hornbein]

TIL the 1983 final episode of MASH attracted 106 million viewers. Most ever in the fiction category.