# Post facts that opened your eye. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 11, 2008, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262 "2008-11-11T23:20:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/221 "2008-11-17T05:46:30Z")
No worries, man, it’s all, like part of the universe . . . we’re both resonating with the same vibes, man . . . ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/222 "2008-11-17T05:49:42Z")
Here’s something I just realized: upon perusing the thread about [things in English that are named after people](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=493072), I realized that Chinese doesn’t have this phenomenon _at all_. Every scientific term, for example, bears a literal description of its function or observation in Chinese. You _never_ see things being named after people. ---
**Author:** ![Euthanasiast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Euthanasiast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euthanasiast)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/223 "2008-11-17T09:59:50Z")
> [@Telcontar](#): > > Perhaps you should have done it for less time than you did; neither of the above is true. If you really want to get into either, start a new thread laying out your case. Give me an example then, of something new or original in the Bible that did not exist anywhere previous in either prior religions or writings or plays or poems or anywhere else, and I’ll take you seriously. I admit that I should have excluded the Inquisitions from the King James reference, but as for the other, I am certain that I am right. How about PM me with just \*\*ONE \*\* example that is either new or original in the Bible, and I’ll consider myself educated. Or don’t, and I’ll consider \*\*you \*\*educated. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/224 "2008-11-17T10:37:22Z")
> [@Euthanasiast](#): > > Give me an example then, of something new or original in the Bible that did not exist anywhere previous in either prior religions or writings or plays or poems or anywhere else, and I’ll take you seriously. I admit that I should have excluded the Inquisitions from the King James reference, but as for the other, I am certain that I am right. How about PM me with just \*\*ONE \*\* example that is either new or original in the Bible, and I’ll consider myself educated. > > Or don’t, and I’ll consider \*\*you \*\*educated. Aren’t there a number of personages/things verified as historically accurate in the New Testament? E.g., there was a high priest named Caiaphas, a Roman governor named Pilate and so on? They weren’t fanciful figures of legend cribbed from Mithraism or what have you, but actual people/things. And I believe at least a couple of the epistles are pretty well accepted to be authentic writings of Paul and others, e.g. [Romans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Romans). If you claim that his writing is neither “new” nor “original”, do you mean that it was somebody else who really wrote it? Or that he was the author but he was slavishly derivative, copying all his ideas without exception from some other identifiable source? Would you be prepared to defend either of these very interesting claims? ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/225 "2008-11-17T11:10:15Z")
That the rods and cones that have evolved in the eyes of the animal kingdom are far from the most efficient system if one were to try and play god and come up with a design. However, at the same time, the mutations/adaptations that have evolved in the rode and cone eye are amazing, in spite of the fact that evolutionary form and function boils down to playing the genetic hand you’re dealt, and if you survive the environment and manage to reproduce, maybe some of your cards will pass to your offspring. ---
**Author:** ![Telcontar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/226 "2008-11-17T15:35:06Z")
> [@Euthanasiast](#): > > Give me an example then, of something new or original in the Bible that did not exist anywhere previous in either prior religions or writings or plays or poems or anywhere else, and I’ll take you seriously. I admit that I should have excluded the Inquisitions from the King James reference, but as for the other, I am certain that I am right. How about PM me with just \*\*ONE \*\* example that is either new or original in the Bible, and I’ll consider myself educated. > > Or don’t, and I’ll consider \*\*you \*\*educated. [http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/copycathub.html](http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/copycathub.html) This is really something for a new thread. Lay out your copycat case, and we can talk. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/227 "2008-11-17T16:01:36Z")
Solids, liquids, and gases are just minor local phenomena. Most of the matter in the universe is plasma. ---
**Author:** ![Laudenum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Laudenum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laudenum)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/228 "2008-11-17T17:03:09Z")
> [@laughingboy](#): > > That some people apparently use the phrase “opened my eye” instead of “opened my eyes” when describing something eye-opening. The mind’s eye perchance? ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/229 "2008-11-17T17:07:45Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > Skin colour is determined by a layer of epithelial cells one cell thick. All the problems in all the world in all history based on skin colour caused by a layer of cells one cell thick. Hunh. It’s not even a whole layer. The melanocytes responsible occupy the basal cell layer (fancy doctor types call it the Stratum germinativum) which is generally, but not always, about one cell thick and represent a mere 5-10% of the cells there. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/230 "2008-11-17T18:25:30Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > -when your parents write checks, they actually have to have money to cover them (checks confused the hell out of me when I was a kid; I never understood why they didn’t just write checks for everything and save that money) Hah. 🙂 That made my remember one from early childhood: that change isn’t something merchants give to people just because they like them (like the baker giving me a cookie when my mum bought bread). ---
**Author:** ![Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4da419/32.png) [@Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gala_Matrix_Fire)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/231 "2008-11-17T23:06:09Z")
I remember being weirded out as a child to think that all my thoughts were originating from my brain, which I was carrying around in my head. I guess I felt more fully integrated before that. I actually walked strangely for a while because I felt like I had to be very careful of anything happening to my head. One day when I was around the same age my dad said something to me about, “It’s as sure as the sun coming up tomorrow,” which immediately made me imagine the sun \*not \*coming up tomorrow. ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2008, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/232 "2008-11-17T23:53:16Z")
Me pondering the nature of infinity and having a minor existential crisis in middle school. “What? It goes on FOREVER?” :eek: ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/233 "2008-11-18T00:33:51Z")
I remember clearly the day when I realised that the moon was a planet of its own and not the reflection of the earth. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/234 "2008-11-18T00:50:46Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > I remember clearly the day when I realised that the moon was a planet of its own and not the reflection of the earth. [Channelling Q.E.D.]It’s not a planet. It’s a Satellite[/Channelling Q.E.D.] ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/235 "2008-11-18T01:10:45Z")
So many people I meet seem to have it all together. They really know what they are doing. They have these great marriages. And they know how to respond just right to any problems with their children. And then I get to know them better. And they are just as messed us, confused, and winging it through life as I am. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/236 "2008-11-18T01:14:18Z")
> [@autz](#): > > So many people I meet seem to have it all together. They really know what they are doing. They have these great marriages. And they know how to respond just right to any problems with their children. > > And then I get to know them better. And they are just as messed us, confused, and winging it through life as I am. One of the other posts in this thread is someone saying “everyone is messed up inside” A-Men to that. Kudos to those who keep it on the inside. I envy and admire you. ---
**Author:** ![Tenebras](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@Tenebras](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tenebras)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/237 "2008-11-18T01:15:09Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > A googol is an emormous number, but one way to instantly dwarf it is to start talking about possible things… as in, the number of possible ways to fill a DVD with 1’s and 0’s (easy to precisely calculate), or the number of possible ways to interconnect the neurons in a human brain (much harder to precisely calculate). > Here’s one that I find freakish: > Suppose that at the end of each year, we produce a commemorative DVD chronicling the events of the year… it would include highlights of political, scientific, artistic, and cultural events of the year. Now, clearly, the DVD from 2008 would be vastly different than the DVD from 2007 and so forth. But there are only a finite (albeit enormously staggeringly huge) number of possible ways to fill a DVD. That means that if the humanity survives forever, eventually humanity will experience a year which, at least on the macro scale which can be documented on a DVD, is totally indistinguishable from some previous year. They don’t even have to live forever. Eventually you just get an enormous stockpile of DVDs that all say “Yup. Still dead.” An olympic sized swimming pool full of Coca-Cola contains approximately one ton of carbon dioxide. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/238 "2008-11-18T01:21:47Z")
It occurred to me a few years ago that the central rituals of Christianity involve reenactments of human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. Around the same time I noted the similarities between human sacrifice and Stalinist show trials–in both cases you have a lot of ceremony, somebody gets offed, the outcome is never in doubt, and the whole process is presented as a very tough thing but one which must be endured for the benefit of a rather abstract entity, or else one’s whole world will be endangered. In college, I was thinking about death one evening, and reflecting that the main thing that bothered me about it was that when I die, my experiences will essentially never have been, since I won’t be around to remember them. (Was it in _L’Étranger_ where the guy says that the kind of afterlife he hopes for is one in which he can remember this one?) Suddenly it occurred to me that I had _already_ forgotten most of my life! That moment, at least, is not likely to slip into the void anytime soon. It was a revelation for me when I learned that the clitoris was basically just a very small penis without a tube running through it. The whole sex organ structure is very easy to comprehend when you realize that there are three basic parts: the tube for urinating, the reproductive tract, and the erectile/pleasure organ. Men simply have the three combined into one Swiss Army-knife structure, while women have them separated. I think they should teach it that way to middle-schoolers. It would make a hell of a lot more sense than the way they taught it to me. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/239 "2008-11-18T01:50:57Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > [Channelling Q.E.D.]It’s not a planet. It’s a Satellite[/Channelling Q.E.D.] And we’re really just the Sun’s moon. Whoaaaaa. Wikipedia is being a pain and I’m too lazy to look up the actual definitions of planets and satellites. Meh. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2008, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262/240 "2008-11-18T03:41:27Z")
> [@Duke](#): > > Quote: > Originally Posted by Euthanasiast That some of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and all from the Salem Witch Trials are almost exclusively the result of a mistranslation of a single line in the King James version of the Bible. > > That’s a neat trick, considering the King James Version was produced in 1611, while the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 and was largely over in 1530. > > Not to mention that the Spanish Inquisition was run by Catholics who would have exclusively used the Vulgate (Latin) Bible. > > Not to also mention that, if the Spanish Inquisition had been using a vernacular Bible, it would have been one in Spanish, not English. So, what you are saying is that the Spanish Inquisition, by using the King James bible, was completely and utterly so unorthodox and impossible without time travel that NOBODY EXPECTED THE SPANISH INQUISITION!?!? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-facts-that-opened-your-eye/472262.md?page=13)