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- It’s not that duck’s quacks don’t echo, it’s that cave ducks (the bald pale-white ones with no eyes) hardly ever quack. - DougC
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Actually, it’s at least close to being plausible. According to the CIA World Factbook, the population of China is 1,273,111,290 and the birth rate is 15.95 births per 1000 population. That makes 20,306,125 new people in one year. If people walked past you at the rate of about 39 per minute, that’s all that would pass you in a year. You’ve also got the pool of 1.3 billion people to get past you. Plus the population is growing at 0.88% so the number of people born per year is also increasing (assuming a steady birth rate.) That might push the 39 per minute figure up a bit.
Quote:
On average, a human being will have sex more than 3,000 times and spend two
weeks kissing in their lifetime.
I doubt this one. For a person who is sexually active for 60 years (I’m being quite generous here) they would have to have sex about once a week for the whole time. I don’t buy it. As for the kissing, with a 75 year lifespan that would require an average of 45 seconds kissing every day. Decide for yourself…
I think that is quite easily achievable.
I’m only 26 and have had sex over 1000 times easily.
& the kissing is integral to that experience too.
I think the average could well be higher than that stated.
I seriously doubt it. For one thing, I think you are having sex more than average. Secondly, the average person’s ‘sexual career’ isn’t going to go on for the 60 year figure I used as an extremely liberal scenario. Heck, I don’t even think the average lifespan for the world is 60 years, though I could be wrong. People die young, people become impotent, or people become unable to find sex partners for whatever reason. I doubt many women past childbearing age in third world countries are getting laid much anymore, for instance.
Do you notice a slight lean toward a “tongue” obsession in this glurge?
Anyone here have time to watch a snail sleep? Yes? Then maybe you can tickle Scylla’s fancy by answering all these questions. Word has it, he wants to know who has time on their hands and enjoys WASTING it. 
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Is that why their legs look like Plastic Man’s?
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Notice the subtle hint at “tongues” again here.
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Scylla, I’d like to kindly remind you to stop chopping up household pets for experimental purposes. Yes, I know you said “someone else” sent you this glurge. But still.
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Wow! The Chinese are pretty talented if they can walk single file while still…umm…procreating.
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Sure they have. My dad personally brought a skunk in from the wild and domesticated it. Are you trying to say that everyone we know as 4,000 year old pets?
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Yes! And Otto Titzling invented the bra! And John Crapper invented the toilet!
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Sure it does. If you have a lisp: Onth, Dunth, etc. (once, dunce, get it?)
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That explains why I’m having to staple my ears back more and more these days.
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Yes, but Scylla invented the useless waste of business hours. Congratulations!
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Note: More tongue innuendo.
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Who wouldn’t believe this? Everyone knows that the British are famous for gas-guzzling engineering mistakes. I’m sure the QE2 has Lucas electronics too.
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Someone must have stayed up all night figuring that one out.
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Yeah yeah. A Toyota. <yawn>
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Yes, but a quick check shows us that we can also type POTTIER, which is a much funnier word. Oh look: PRETTIER, PITIER, WITTIER, WIPER…neat!
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Blink…blink. Why?
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I’d better start making use of that time by reading or something.
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It’s a conspiracy! THEY are out to make us believe it’s always 10:10! Now if I could only figure out if that was AM or PM…
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Maybe it’s because of the thought of eating rubble?
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Jeez, I hate to think there were five wise men and only three of them brought gifts. Unless, of course, a couple of them went in on one LARGER gift, then that would be cool. I’d hate to think of Jesus getting ripped off because his birthday is so close to Christmas.
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Remember my dad? The guy with the pet skunk? Well, he also had a pet croc. The thing was, indeed getting too big for its bathtub, and thus, it was quite a relief when he choked on a bit of hamburger and died. I’m sure my dad cried though.
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It’s also a kind of peanut butter. Another conspiracy?
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Wood I!? Wood I? (See bad joke thread for details.)
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Still more tongue stuff!
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Is this another tongue reference? Is this intended to make me feel bad about my shortage of kissing time? Maybe we can start kissing at red lights to make up the difference.
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These same people make up more than half of the population. The horror!
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No thanks. I’m staying out of your “tongue thing” whatever it is.
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Sure, if you let Typhoid Mary use them before you do.
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Yes, but we had fire long before we had cigarettes. Why did we need cigarette lighters before cigarettes? Sheesh. People are a little backwards sometimes.
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Maybe it’s because they don’t have tongues?
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Who did this research? Xerox or Preparation H?
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We can figure this out now. Everyone stick your tonue out and lick your monitor.
Seriously, this licking thing has to stop.
But as for the most important one, the one involving Flintstone vitamins…
That one WAS true for many years. Flintstone vitamins used to include Fred, Barney, Wilma, Bam-Bam, Pebbles, Dino, and… believe it or not, Fred’s car! But not Betty.
However, Bayer finally added Betty Rubble a few years ago, along with the Great Gazoo!
So, that one may have been true when the factoids list first started making its way around the Internet, but it’s NOT true now.
A blacklight Sabre yes. It will glow under any UV source but with a black light most of the visible spectrum is blocked out so it won’t overwhelm the fluorescence of the kitty pee.
**TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. **
one word: Potterytipper
I believe this is true. A crocodile’s tongue is attached along most of its length to the floor of its mouth.
Probably true, if you put "sleep’ in quotes. I would guess that some species of snails can become dormant, estivating for that long if their pond dries up.
Probably true (sort of). I believe at birth the kneecaps are composed of cartilage, and don’t become bone until later in childhood.
True. At least some butterflies, like some other insects, have taste receptors in their feet.
Depends a lot on how you define “domesticated.” What about the lab rat, lab mouse, etc.?
Not in 1932, and not the whole falls. The American Falls has sometimes frozen over, and in 1848 an ice dam temporarily blocked the flow over the falls (but they did not freeze).
From this site
Thus saith the OED:
Fascinating.
This one bugs me, since in the year I first saw this list (1998?) February didn’t have a full moon, either.
To cover a few others, “jiffy” is occasionally used as a unit of time, but nobody seems to agree on the meaning. I’ve also heard it used to refer to the time it takes light to travel one meter, the time it takes light to cross the diameter of a hydrogen atom, and the Planck time.
I don’t know how they’re counting cat sounds, but all the dogs I’ve ever had have had far more than ten sounds. At the least, there’s barking, yipping, whimpering, howling, purring, baying, growling, slurping, snorting, and panting, and several of those have quite distinct variants.
And I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t lick their own elbow. The “fact” doesn’t specify the outside of the elbow, and the inside is easy.
Are there any we’ve missed?
The inclusion of this one has convinced me : These lists were developed by C.M. Kornbluth, who actually escaped to the future and then came back to see how far along we’ve come. Every couple of years he distributes another one to see how many people believe it.
That’s what I meant, but I guess I phrased it badly. Should have said “that Y”.
You leave my mama out of this. She never done nothin’ to you.
Chronos, you must have missed my link to a previous discussion on months without full moons.
While North and South America are really stretching it, I’d say we have a solid debunk with Oceania.
Assuming you’re geeky enough to want to deny Asia all of those islands and create a continent with no large, central mass.
When did people dream up Oceania, anyway? I usually see the islands as being at least understood as being Asian, which keeps us with the ritual number of seven continents.
Oceania includes Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and the other islands arund there, from what I know. It’s just the official name, rather than “Australia”.