- Forums
- Cross Site
- The Asylum
- Stuff to ponder
Stuff to ponderFollow
I'm bored at work. My boss and my colleague are away, I really can't be ***** to work in this glorious weather, and there really isn't much happening here. I therefor allow myself some cut&pasta, to bring you these gems from far and wide, for your perusement and pondering.
In the 2004 US presidential election, every city with more than 500,000 inhabitants returned a majority vote for John Kerry. (Granta, summer 2008)
Iran’s fertility rate has fallen from 6.5 in 1980 to 2.1 today. (Martin Rees speech)
Handel and Bach were born within a month of one another and less than 100 miles apart—but never met. (Handel: The Man and His Music, by Jonathan Keates)
During the 1960s, a top ten song in the US charts had an average of 176 words. Last year it had 436. (Harper’s, August 2008)
135m postcards were sent last year, 30m more than in 2003. (The Guardian, 17th July 2008)
During his first year in office, Gordon Brown introduced 2,823 laws—more than any previous prime minister in the same period. (Sunday Telegraph, 5th july 2008)
At the 2004 Olympics, the Bahamas won just over six medals per million population—almost three times as many as any other country. (Economist.com, 3rd June 2008)
In the US, more than 90 per cent of suicide attempts involving guns are successful. The success rate for jumping from high places is 34 per cent, and for drug overdoses just 2 per cent. (Time, 30th June 2008)
Boeing has a patent on using the gravity of the moon to adjust the orbits of artificial satellites. (space-travel.com, 11th April 2008)
The average ratio between the actual length of a meandering river and its length as the crow flies is pi. (Fermat’s Enigma, by Simon Singh)
Nelson Mandela has just been removed from the US terror watch list. (Daily Telegraph, 2nd July 2008)
About one third of the goals in Euro 2008 were scored by people who were not born citizens of the country they were playing for. (Slate, 30th June 2008)
The number of editorial corrections published in the Wall Street Journal in the first quarter of 2008, under Rupert Murdoch’s stewardship, has risen by 25 per cent compared to the first quarter of 2007. (The Atlantic, July/August 2008)
John McCain and Barack Obama are both left-handed, as were presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton; presidential candidates Al Gore, Bob Dole, John Edwards, Bill Bradley and Ross Perot; and Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. (New York Sun, 23rd June 2008)
There are an estimated 10,000 trillion ants on earth—roughly 1.6m ants for each person. Their combined weight is equivalent to the weight of the entire human population. (MSN)
San Marino—population 30,000—has one person in prison. (New York Times, 23rd April 2008)
In 1948, the first year of the NHS, there were 480,000 hospital beds and 167,000 people on waiting lists; today there are 167,000 beds with 1,283,100 on waiting lists. (The sun, 2nd July 2008)
Nearly 80 per cent of al Qaeda members in Afghanistan were killed in the last months of 2001.(New Yorker, 2nd June 2008)
Kadima won Israel’s 2006 election with 22 per cent of the vote—less than the Liberal Democrats achieved in Britain in 2005. The only party in modern democracies to have won an election with a lower proportion of the vote was Israel’s Labour party, which won in 1999 with 20 per cent of the vote. (politicalbetting.com, 1st June 2008)
Americans drove 11bn fewer miles in March 2008 than in March 2007. (US department of transportation)
In England and Wales in 2005-06, there were at least 1,300 victims of fatal occupational injuries, compared with 765 homicide victims. (Centre for Crime and Justice Studies)
Cuba will lift its toaster ban in 2010. (NY Times, 14th March 2008)
More Rolex Oyster watches have been reported stolen on the Costa del Sol than have ever been manufactured. (Money Week)
In the US, 83 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions caused by food can be accounted for by growth and production and only 11 per cent by transportation, of which 4 per cent are due to transportation between grower and seller.
The QE2 has one full-time resident, an 87-year-old American widow who has lived in a modest, windowless cabin for seven years at a rent of £3,500 a month.
The 13 members of Opec produce around 36m barrels of oil per day. Non-Opec nations account for around 50m.
Napoleon often *********** before going into battle. (The Guardian, 31st May 2008)
There are nearly 200,000 students at Cairo University. (New Yorker, 2nd June 2008)
The oldest man in Europe and the oldest man in the US were both born on 6th June 1896. (The Observer, 1st June 2008)
I must say, out of all those, this one:
The average ratio between the actual length of a meandering river and its length as the crow flies is pi.
is the strangest. It's the kind of stuff that would make me believe in God, if I was so inclined.
is the strangest. It's the kind of stuff that would make me believe in God, if I was so inclined.
RedPhoenixxx wrote:
I must say, out of all those, this one:
The average ratio between the actual length of a meandering river and its length as the crow flies is pi.
is the strangest. It's the kind of stuff that would make me believe in God, if I was so inclined.
is the strangest. It's the kind of stuff that would make me believe in God, if I was so inclined.
Alma wrote:
I lost my post
Elinda wrote:
A meandering river, will very much follow a looped course (incomplete circles). So pi is simply the ratio of a circles circumference (the incomplete loops) to its diameter (length of river as the crow flies).
Well exactly. Why should a meandering river follow a looped course?
Surely, you could build an artificial river that would follow a arbitrary trajectory, which when divided by by its length as the crow flies, wouldn't give you pi as a ratio. No?
Maths aren't by strong point, so you'll have to excuse me if I sound like a ******.
RedPhoenixxx wrote:
Elinda wrote:
A meandering river, will very much follow a looped course (incomplete circles). So pi is simply the ratio of a circles circumference (the incomplete loops) to its diameter (length of river as the crow flies).
Well exactly. Why should a meandering river follow a looped course?
Surely, you could build an artificial river that would follow a arbitrary trajectory, which when divided by by its length as the crow flies, wouldn't give you pi as a ratio. No?
Maths aren't by strong point, so you'll have to excuse me if I sound like a ******.
Take a look at this picture.
Alma wrote:
I lost my post
Elinda wrote:
My geology is pretty rusty, but a simplied picture is this; the energy of the water being the strongest where the pressure is the greatest - along the edges basically. It causes erosion in a circular pattern. (it of course is all based on fluid dynamics, flow rates, rivers load, bottom and bank composition, turbulence etc).
Hmmm, I see.
Cool stuff. Gonna read up on it.
Thanks, got something to do for the rest of the afternoon now!
Of course this raises the question as to how you define a "meandering river."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
Quote:
There are an estimated 10,000 trillion ants on earth—roughly 1.6m ants for each person. Their combined weight is equivalent to the weight of the entire human population. (MSN)
Well cool, my sadistic childhood barbeques were born less of an innate disregard for life and moreso of self-preservation.
Good to know, thanks Red!
Quote:
The average ratio between the actual length of a meandering river and its length as the crow flies is pi. (Fermat’s Enigma, by Simon Singh)
Thats the one that did it for me too.
Chaos theory anyone?
"If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders". Carlin.
paulsol wrote:
Quote:
The average ratio between the actual length of a meandering river and its length as the crow flies is pi. (Fermat’s Enigma, by Simon Singh)
Thats the one that did it for me too.
Chaos theory anyone?
I think my physics professor said one day, "No one looks at a neatly stacked pyramid of marbles and says, 'OK, Who dropped the marbles?'."
He then went on to say something about how Vultures don't gather around smoking pot all day, we got confused by that one. I don't know what it had to do with chaos and patterns...
Can't sleep, clown will eat me.
RedPhoenixxx wrote:
Elinda wrote:
My geology is pretty rusty, but a simplied picture is this; the energy of the water being the strongest where the pressure is the greatest - along the edges basically. It causes erosion in a circular pattern. (it of course is all based on fluid dynamics, flow rates, rivers load, bottom and bank composition, turbulence etc).
Hmmm, I see.
Cool stuff. Gonna read up on it.
Thanks, got something to do for the rest of the afternoon now!
Also cause of the formation of oxbow lakes.
publiusvarus wrote:
we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.
Debalic wrote:
RedPhoenixxx wrote:
Elinda wrote:
My geology is pretty rusty, but a simplied picture is this; the energy of the water being the strongest where the pressure is the greatest - along the edges basically. It causes erosion in a circular pattern. (it of course is all based on fluid dynamics, flow rates, rivers load, bottom and bank composition, turbulence etc).
Hmmm, I see.
Cool stuff. Gonna read up on it.
Thanks, got something to do for the rest of the afternoon now!
Also cause of the formation of oxbow lakes.
You know, one day we were all eating dinner in the cafeteria on campus, and there were flyers around for a anti-evolution student group. They were giving a presentation later that day. The flyer said that it was impossible for the Colorado River to form the Grand Canyon... that erosion didn't work that way.
I wish I had gone to that presentation to learn what phsyco reasonings they had behind all the BS they had in that flyer.
Can't sleep, clown will eat me.
Quote:
along the edges basically. It causes erosion in a circular pattern. (it of course is all based on fluid dynamics, flow rates, rivers load, bottom and bank composition, turbulence etc).
Wow, even God is subordinate to geometry!
Pythagoras, eat your heart out.
I wish I had gone to that presentation to learn what phsyco reasonings they had behind all the BS they had in that flyer.
Read any Gbaji post. "Look at that, obviously that couldn't happen by chance. Everyone knows that it couldn't. The end."
Disclaimer:
To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.
To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.
Recent Visitors: 326
All times are in CST
Anonymous Guests (326)
- Forums
- Cross Site
- The Asylum
- Stuff to ponder
© 2024 Fanbyte LLC