This was one of the most memorable days of my childhood. There was just so much to see, and I hadn’t even known I was supposed to be able to!
When I was in school, I found a book in the library that my dad had checked out nearly 30 years before… His name was still written on the card.
It was then I realized that all of these books i had read, other people had read as well. These stories didn’t just exist in my own head, and I wasn’t even the first to discover them and enjoy them.
Pluto is not a planet.
It was a real eye opener to find that something as fundamental in astronomy as the 9th planet of the solar system, isn’t. :eek:
That seems more a reflection on the limitation of the media. If you had a much simpler system where you only were allowed a string of four pieces of binary information, it wouldn’t mean that 2009 was going to be a repeat of 1993.
Did you Google that answer?
I’m not sure what your issue with Q.E.D. is (nor do I care enough to have it explained in this thread), but considering your last six posts have you following him around all over the SDMB just to make some varying comment about him and Google, you’re being a jerk. Have it out with him in a Pit thread, stick a few pins in a voodoo doll, cry out to your god for vengeance–just stop littering the forums with your snipes.
Palm trees are not trees. They’re bushes. If you’re trapped on a tropical island and make a raft outta palm trees, it’ll sink. Palm trees don’t float.
I don’t think that’s true. There are several different kinds of “palms” - plants in the family Arecaceae. Some are shrubs, some are vines, some are trees.
I’d also like a cite for the idea that they do not float.
Man adrift in Indian Ocean survives by clinging to a floating palm.
I was about 15 I think, and reading a newspaper article about some scientific research into something or other I don’t even recall now. One of the final sentences explained that such-and-such was expected to reach its final development in around 2050. And then it hit me, like a thunderbolt: that meant that in all probability I wouldn’t be alive to see it (I’d be 80 and my family don’t tend to make old bones, so it isn’t a given at any rate). I know we’re all confronted by our own mortality at some point, but I never expected to have it so instantaneously.
For me it was learning that weight loss occurs through breathing, primarily. We aren’t nuclear reactors, turning mass into energy. We are chemical reactions and weight is lost by burning glycogen and expelling the resultant carbon (dioxide) through exhaling. We inhale O2 and exhale CO2 (and lots of N, but that is inert).
When I was around 8 and started thinking philosophical thoughts, it occurred to me that everyone must think their own opinions are correct and feel sure of themselves. I disagreed with most people around me about a lot of fundamental things like religion and morality. But if everyone had the same feeling as me, that they knew they were correct, then clearly I can feel as though I know I’m correct but still be wrong!
(I guess this wasn’t a “fact” as such, but since everyone else is posting their childhood revelations, I thought I’d join in… Anyway I eventually realized that, no, it’s just that I’m right about everything.)
Guess you didn’t bother to consult a dictionary before you posted that. I know what you’re trying to say, but that word does mean more than one thing.
He should have Googled that answer instead!
Regardless as to how much we may or may not like it…we can never separate ourselves from ourselves.
Think about it…If I have exceedingly low self esteem (like I hate every fiber of my own being etc.) I can never spend a moment away from myself.
If I am adequately comfortable in my own skin, then I am just another person that I have to deal with on a daily basis
(And to think if we actually started a convo about consciousness…)
I appreciate that your ‘Explains a lot’ comment was probably something like humorous garnish or a written smirk, but actually it doesn’t tell us anything much at all because IQ tests don’t tell us anything much at all. Doing well or badly in an IQ test doesn’t indicate anything except the ability to do well or badly in an IQ test.
Re the OP, I still find it staggering how technological and conceptual breakthroughs can happen, and the rapid progress that can follow. For hundreds or even thousands of years, nobody could build a flying machine and powered, controlled flight was ‘impossible’. But then we went from the Wright Brothers’ first successful powered flight to landing on the moon in a little less than 66 years.
I fear you might be missing the point. IQ is measured on a Gaussian bell curve: 100 is, by definition, the mathematical median. It’s like saying that half the people in the UK make less than £24,700 (today’s national median), or that half the kids in the class are getting below-average grades. I don’t mean to put words in UncleBill’s mouth, but I presume he was being facetious, in that half the population, by definition, MUST have an IQ < 100. It explains nothing except that half the people are above-median at something and the other half are below-median at that thing.
My eye-opening fact? The ancient Egyptians (Old Kingdom Pharaohs, e.g.) were as old to Aristotle as Aristotle is to us. That’s pretty freaking old.
Did you know that one useful property of a Gaussian bell curve is that the mean and median are the same? I did not know this, and I don’t fully understand it, but apparently it is true, and it prevents me from having to make a disclaimer about the difference between a ‘median’ and a ‘mean,’ so that’s pretty handy.
My take on the average IQ thing is simply to realize that half the population is below average intelligence, and average ain’t so great. Same thing for driving skills - half the population of drivers have below average skills. I think I’m going to go get a bus pass.
And a certain elderly relative of mine, who used to give us hot chocolate when we went to her house to sled on her hill in the winter, was old enough to have remembered both of those events.
Here’s a fact about the Spanish Inquisition that’s actually true, for a change.
The Spanish Inquisition existed for four hundred years and killed about 1,000-2,000 people during all that time. More people in Spain were trampeled to death by livestock than killed by the Spanish Inquisition during the time of its existence. Or for another comparison, Chairman Mao may have killed more people in an average daylight hour during the Great Leap Forward than the Spanish Inquisition ever killed.
Interesting. I think, though, that the Inquisition is notorious mainly for its viciousness, which isn’t necessarily diminished by the modest scale of the operation. But it is always interesting to put things in perspective numerically.