Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 1)

With the records held by an aerobie and a boomerang I would expect that catching and riding the wind would play a huge role in ultra distance efforts.

Let’s keep in mind that we’re talking about earth only. Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell threw a makeshift javelin for “miles and miles” and actually outdistanced Alan Shepard’s golf ball, and captured the first Lunar Olympics title.

These records explicitly exclude wind, though how you can discount it is questionable.

Don’t know about these records but land speed records are an average of two runs in opposite directions. Hopefully that takes the wind out.

Similarly, track records require that the wind speed to the runners’ backs be less than a certain amount. I get that all confounding factors must be minimized.

The problem is that air is never completely still. There will always be pockets of uplift and wind speeds and movement at altitude are not equal to those on the ground. I’m skeptical those can be completely ruled out.

Competitors flinging objects over the same area in a short span of time can eliminate wind and updrafts as a factor, to some degree. Smoke could expose some of those conditions. I don’t know if doppler radar can resolve any small changes over a small area.

Perhaps it’s not so much the single record throw as testing the design over multiple throws to see which will consistently travel the furthest.

There are now more transistors at work on this planet (some 15 quintillion, or 15,000,000,000,000,000,000) than there are leaves on all the trees in the world.

(from “Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World” by Simon Winchester. He published this in 2018; he doesn’t give a cite for the figures, but it’ll do for me!)

The “gorillas” in “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” were originally intended to be literal gorillas.

It doesn’t say that in your link. The summary says “Written as a humorous commentary on women dating unattractive men,” and the commentary reinforces that several times.

…gorgeous girls going out with monsters…

To be fair, my source isn’t the link but a classic rock station I happen to be listening to right now.

Hard to refute that.

Still don’t believe it, though.

unattractive men, even ugly men are a far cry from a handsome silverback. And, contrary to Hollywood standards, many monsters are very good looking.

You should post this to the jokes thread.

I wonder what it is about Fort Funston that makes it the spot where they set records for Aerobies. I believe I’ve been there in about 1995; IIRC what was memorable about the place was the strong, steady wind off the Pacific, into which some visitors were flying a glider into the wind. It just… hovered… there…as long as you like.

So could this mean the Aerobies were thrown downwind?? I mean, you could crinkle up a paper ball and chuck it, and it would land 100+ meters downwind.

Littoral gorillas? Did Elaine Morgan write the lyrics?

Submerged up to their noses in the inter-tidal zone, watching, waiting for their time…

I was trying to think of something witty (“Gorillas In The Sea Mist”?) after reading @Slithy_Tove’s remark, and then I read yours and busted out laughing. Nicely done.

Along with the more well-known grammatical categories of tense (past, present, future), aspect (actions seen as singular points, continuous or repeated) and mood (indicative, imperative,conditional), some languages must mark verbs for “evidentiality”, i.e. the source of information : seen/felt, reported, inferred, assumed. This is the case in many American languges notably.

Welcome Moonrise! I hope you have as much fun here as we do. Please keep posting.

And, um, spell checking others is part of the fun. :wink:

Signed, another pedant who has been taken down for spelling oops in the past.

That well-known story about Van Halen requesting no brown M&M candies on set as part of their contract? I’d always taken it as an example of celebrity snootiness and needing their own way. Apparently it’s actually a safety check.