The useless information thread!

[DarthWeevil]

The belief that harakiri means suicide in japanese is according to my friend (who's japanese) wrong.  Harakiri means to cut your stomach, but suicide is something else.

 

 

Seppuku, I believe.

 

Shiitake means meshroom in Japanese, so Shiitake mushroom is redundant.

 

Silver has the highest conductivity of all metals. Pure gold is so soft, it can be molded with your bare hands.

 

Nitron is C20H16N4, but that is not the source of my name, merely a coincidence. Other names for Nitron are: 4-Diphenyl-endoanilino-dihydrotriazole; 1,4-diphenyl-3-anilino-1H-1,2,4-triazolium hydroxide; 3,5,6-triphenyl-2,3,5,6-tetraazabicyclo(2.1.1)hex-1-ene. Sweet. :D

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Sushi is rice.

 

Sashami is raw fish

 

(maybe everyone knows tht i dunno, but I didn't till i ate at a sushi restaurant last year)

[Kaftan Barlast]

Seppuku was the formal ritual of suicide practised by the Samurai of old Japan.

 

The basic principle of cutting your abdomen open is the same but it also requires an assistant, a Kaishakunin, that beheads the Samurai. This was done partially to "ease the pain" and partially so the victim would not disgrace himself by screaming or twitching around from the pain.

 

Seppuku was a way of death reserved for samurai only(considered by some to be a privillige). Since the Samurai class was officially abolished in 1867 with the Meiji restoration, so was the ritual of seppuku.

 

Still, the practise lived on but could no longer be called "seppuku". Therefore its usually called "harakire".

 

 

 

..the origins of it was that in acient Japan, sometime in the 1100 I believe. A certain general(I have forgotten his name) was loosing a battle and instead of being captured and tortured by the enemy, he cut open his stoumach after ordering his second to sever his head afterwards, and take it away so the enemy couldnt desecrate it.

[taks]

Electrons can exist in two places at once. if you fire a stream of single electrons through a cathode ray tube at regular intervals, say 1 every second, passing through a slit the size of the electron, the electron acts in the same way as a beam of light passing through a gap of its wavelength, and splits. appearing in two places.

 

Therefore electrons are particles and waves at the same time. I have seen this. it is true. beats me though.

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i believe you are referring to photons... the particle/wave theory of light is well documented. electrons are particles, and their apparent ability to exist in more than one place is not due to wave nature. it is due more to statistical probabilities, akin to schroedinger's cat.

 

taks

[DarthWeevil]

Electrons can exist in two places at once. if you fire a stream of single electrons through a cathode ray tube at regular intervals, say 1 every second, passing through a slit the size of the electron, the electron acts in the same way as a beam of light passing through a gap of its wavelength, and splits. appearing in two places.

 

Therefore electrons are particles and waves at the same time. I have seen this. it is true. beats me though.

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i believe you are referring to photons... the particle/wave theory of light is well documented. electrons are particles, and their apparent ability to exist in more than one place is not due to wave nature. it is due more to statistical probabilities, akin to schroedinger's cat.

 

taks

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you're probably right. I definitely saw a single electron appear in two places. Maybe that was what it was. *looks manic* but I did see it.. I DIIIID

[taks]

well, you can't really "see" the electrons... hehe... waaay too small

 

taks

[taks]

Did you know that humans have already used up 2/3 of Earth's total natural resources?

if this one isn't hype, i don't know what is... agenda driven article, maybe? just maybe? (yes, i read it)... given the author (well, study chair), Robert Watson, i'd say the report is rather suspect. he's about as reputable as michael mann.

 

Did you know that world is actually an oblong ellipsoid (like a football) rather than  a sphere?

(No, I'm just joking there!) 

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the earth is not a sphere. i had never considered a football shape, but maybe...

 

taks

[DarthWeevil]

well, you can't really "see" the electrons... hehe... waaay too small

 

taks

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LOL (w00t) ok smart ass

 

OK what I saw was the energy emmitted by the electron hitting the end of the cathode ray tube. and I know it was a single electron initially cos we had a cathode ray oscilloscope to show the firing of each. But to be honest it was like 15 years ago. Mostly what I remember is thinking. Cool.

[taks]

OK what I saw was the energy emmitted by the electron hitting the end of the cathode ray tube. and I know it was a single electron initially cos we had a cathode ray oscilloscope to show the firing of each. But to be honest it was like 15 years ago. Mostly what I remember is thinking. Cool. 

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gotcha... i figured as much (i was being silly, of course).

 

what you actually saw with the CRT, however, is beyond my expertise.

 

photons, OTOH, actually are waves and particles simultaneously. light is a strange beast. photons are also massless, whereas electrons have measurable mass.

 

taks

[taks]

hmm... here's an odd one that probably only seems odd to people like me (i understand why it works):

 

PCS phones (CDMA) transmit their signals so that they arrive at the cell tower below the noise floor.

 

taks

[Laozi]

Seppuku was the formal ritual of suicide practised by the Samurai of old Japan.

 

The basic principle of cutting your abdomen open is the same but it also requires an assistant, a Kaishakunin, that beheads the Samurai. This was done partially to "ease the pain" and partially so the victim would not disgrace himself by screaming or twitching around from the pain.

 

Seppuku was a way of death reserved for samurai only(considered by some to be a privillige). Since the Samurai class was officially abolished in 1867 with the Meiji restoration, so was the ritual of seppuku.

 

Still, the practise lived on but could no longer be called "seppuku". Therefore its usually called "harakire".

 

 

 

..the origins of it was that in acient Japan, sometime in the 1100 I believe. A certain general(I have forgotten his name) was loosing a battle and instead of being captured and tortured by the enemy, he cut open his stoumach after ordering his second to sever his head afterwards, and take it away so the enemy couldnt desecrate it.

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Yes, but in modern times Seppuku is most often performed by folding a frisbee in half and then swallowing it.

[kirottu]

Some of you probably know this one:  Dolphins are the only other living creatures than humans that have sex for other reasons than population increase.

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Actually atleast one of the ape species does that too and sometimes with same sex.

[Darth Flatus]

Some of these facts are a little off - as kirottu correctly pointed out, bonobo or pygmy chimps also do each other for fun, they also do each other face to face and they walk upright a lot.

 

Assassin comes from the arabic word hashshashin ("he who smokes hash" or something) a group of people who smoked a lot of weed and protected their master and killed enemies in secret - or something.

[Laozi]

^^^ I heard that about assassin before, I think on NPR, by the linguist at UC Berkeley

[mkreku]

Some of you probably know this one:  Dolphins are the only other living creatures than humans that have sex for other reasons than population increase.

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This is not true. Several other species have sex for fun and not for breeding only. Chimpanzees even 'play with themselves' and use "sex toys".

 

Edit: Even the word starting with mast and ending with urbate is stopped by the filter on this site. That's not a bad word, is it? I mean, that's the most harmless word I could think of to describe the bad monkeys.

[Starbreeze]

More:

 

One galactic year is 250 million earth-years. This is the time it takes for our solar system to make one revolution around the Milky Way Galaxy.

If you are planning on living that long...

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

Assassin comes from the arabic word hashshashin ("he who smokes hash" or something) a group of people who smoked a lot of weed and protected their master and killed enemies in secret - or something.

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The word thug comes from an indian sect callled the Thuggee.

[Diamond]

OK. USELESS INFO!

 

1. Repellents do not drive mosquitos away, they hide us.

2. More people per year are killed by donkeys than die in airplane crashes.

3. America Airlines saved $40000 by removing one olive from the meal for 1-class passengers.

4. It is anatomically impossible to bite your own elbow.

5. Venus is the only planet in Solar System that rotates counter-clockwise.

6. A pearl can be dissolved in vinegar.

7. Richard Millhouse Nixon is the first US president to have all letters of the word 'criminal' in his name. William Jefferson Clinton is the second.

8. 100 people per year die by choking with a pen.

9. Women wink 2 times more often than men do.

10. It is possible to make cow go up the stairs, but impossible to make it go downstairs.

11. Snails can sleep up to 3 years.

12. A lighter was invented before matches.

13. Almost every person who read this tried to bite his/her own elbow.

[kirottu]

13. Almost every person who read this tried to bite his/her own elbow.

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:">

[Rosbjerg]

hehe .. I didn't .. though I did try the first time I read it a long time ago!

[Diamond]

hehe .. I didn't .. though I did try the first time I read it a long time ago!

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So did I. :D

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

Must resist urge to bite own elbow...

[Torpar]

All right some more random facts I can think of...

 

-Did you know that the Romans invented the first flushing toilet?

 

-Did you know that eating chocolate can increase one's lifespan?

 

-Did you know that the Mongolians were the first to practice biological warfare by catapulting corpses infected with the plague into enemy cities?

 

-Did you know that the total surface area of an adult lung can cover a little more than a third of a tennis court?

 

-Did you know that there were 20 Roman emperors during a 50 year period from 335 to 385 AD mostly because the successor was always murdering his predecessor?

 

-Did you know that if you cut off an elephant's ears, it would die?

 

-Did you know that a Xerxes led a Persian army which was 10 times the entire population of Greece to conquer the Greek city-states and still lost?

 

-Did you know that the US was churning out 6 warships per day during World War II?

 

-Did you know that (scientists predict) if humans never have existed, octopuses might be ruling the world today?

 

-Did you know that if we condensed the entire timeline of Earth into a hour, the history of mankind would only be a fraction of the last second?

 

-Did you know that if we condensed the entire timeline of Earth into a large tome, the history of mankind would only be the size of a period (saw this on Discovery the other day)?

 

-Did you notice that you've just wasted several minutes reading through this post?

[Roger the Sith]

-Did you know that if you cut off an elephant's ears, it would die?

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Why would anyone cut off an elephant's ear?

[Darth Flatus]

Did you notice that you've just wasted several minutes reading through this post?

 

HAHA! jokes on you suckah! i only read the last line!!

[taks]

Marilyn Chambers is the only hardcore porn actress ever to star in a mainstream motion picture, David Cronenberg's "Rabid" from 1977.

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? what about traci lords?

 

taks