72 Awesome Facts (from the 2023 NYT)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I loved some of these random facts from the year end New York Times (gift link below). With gems such as:

Neuropsychology has shown that short-term memory lasts 15 to 30 seconds, after which it either has to be encoded as a long-term memory or it decays.

Some people who listen to contemporary Christian music count what’s referred to as JPMs: mentions of Jesus Per Minute.

On “Sesame Street,” Cookie Monster’s cookies contain no oils, fats or sugars, which would stain the muppet. They’re made of pancake mix, puffed rice, instant coffee, Grape-Nuts and water, with colored gobs of glue for chocolate chips.

Wedding rings stem back to the ancient Egyptians, who believed that there was a vena amoris, Latin for “vein of love,” in the left hand’s fourth finger with a direct route to the heart.

Harald Bluetooth, a Danish Viking king who died near the end of the 10th century, is celebrated as a unifier of feuding Nordic fiefs and the inspiration for the name of a wireless technology designed to unite devices.

The skew of affluent students enrolled is so extreme at some U.S. colleges that more undergraduates come from the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from the entire bottom 60 percent, one study found.

Nearly half of the United States’ unsheltered population — those who sleep on the streets, in tents, in cars or in other places not intended for human habitation — resides in California.

The Federal Election Commission does not have the power to look in bank accounts and must take campaign finance disclosure reports at face value.

(I inadvertently first linked 2021, but given only so many shares, am including it too!)

2

Odd.

In Victorian times, treadmills were used as punishment and to prevent idleness, with English convicts condemned to trudge for hours a day.

Alfred Hitchcock was afraid of the dark, crowds and solitude.

Investors now snatch up nearly one in six homes sold in America.

The United States is home to 161 active or potentially active volcanoes — approximately 10 percent of the world’s total.

The mechanism that allows us to find room for dessert after a big meal is called sensory specific satiety, which means the body has different limits for different foods as a way to ensure a balanced intake of nutrients.

3

I told my mom I had a different compartment for dessert!

4

He was afraid of crowds and solitude? How exactly did that work, I wonder?

Hitchcock is all alone and can’t stand it. He calls around for some friends to come by and keep him company. 5 friends show up. “Too many! One or two of you must leave now!!”

5

It’s not that odd; my brother is like that. I know it seems oxymoronic at first glance, but “crowd” and “solitude” are not really opposites.

My brother, for example, has never lived alone-- before he was married, he always had roommates, even when he could afford not to. He wants the company of at least one person at a movie, or a meal, but one is enough. His mother-in-law and developmentally disabled sister-in-law have lived with him and his wife since his father-in-law died, and he really likes it that way. They pay no rent, but his MIL does nearly all the cooking and cleaning. More importantly, a few times a year, his wife has to travel for work, and he is not alone in the house.

He does not, however, like noisy, elbow-to-elbow crowds. When we took my son to Legoland (he lives in Cali), he wanted to go on a weekday, and get there right when they opened, so as to avoid crowds as much as possible; he also paid extra for all of us to have the fastpass so we could go to the front of the lines.

If we are in a space with hundreds of people, but it’s a big space, where everyone can reach their arms out and not touch fingertips, he’s fine. But have just 10 people in a space where they can’t spread out at least a meter apart, and normal conversation-level voices make so much noise the sound is grating, my brother is close to panic attack.

It’s just a matter of scale, and it’s pretty consistent, since he doesn’t like enclosed spaces, and hates things like getting an MRI.

If you phrase it this way: “He craves company, but since he doesn’t like tight spaces, he doesn’t want to be crowded,” it makes perfect sense.

Incidentally, my son is getting to be exactly the same, and it is just one more thing on an ever-lengthening list of ways my son is like my brother. The boychick is practically my brother’s clone. He even looks like him-- more than he looks like my husband. Which is really funny, since my brother looks nothing like me, or either of our parents.

6

These snippets, by the way, coming from a listing on page three of every day’s paper. It leads you to articles you might never have read otherwise. I’m talking the dead tree edition, of course.

7

True, but at the end of the list the relevant articles are given in the web version too.

I had the same reaction reading about Hitchcock - it’s gotta suck being scared of both crowds and solitude. But I suppose two is company. And maybe for him a crowd is three thousand and not three… (guess I could read the article…)

8

So did I, in apparently just those words! (So I’ve been told; I don’t remember it.)