Trivia Dominoes: Play Off the Last Bit of Trivia

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28827

A “blue angel”, or “blue dart”, also known in Australia as a “blue flame”, is flatus ignition. Flatus ignition is also known as pyroflatulence, or fart lighting. Yes, fart lighting.

Fart lighting is the practice of igniting the gases produced by human flatulence. It produces a flame of a blue hue. The fact that flatus is flammable, and the actual combustion of it through this practice, gives rise to much humorous derivation. Other colors of flame such as orange and yellow are possible with the color dependent on the mixture of gases formed in the colon. In order to “fire fart”, one must have a fart prepared in the anal cavity, and a lighter at the ready. Then they fart onto the lighter.

The composition of farts varies dramatically among individuals. Flatulence produces a mixture of gases with the following six as major components: carbon dioxide, hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, methane, nitrogen, oxygen.

Methane burns in oxygen forming water and carbon dioxide often producing a blue hue (ΔHc = −891 kJ/mol), as:

CH[sub]4/sub + 2 O[sub]2/sub → CO[sub]2/sub + 2 H[sub]2[/sub]O(g)

Hydrogen sulfide also combusts (ΔHc = −519 kJ/mol) to

2 H[sub]2[/sub]S(g) + 3 O[sub]2/sub → 2 SO[sub]2/sub + 2 H[sub]2[/sub]O(g)

The odor associated with flatus is due to hydrogen sulfide, skatole, indole, volatile amines and short-chain fatty acids. These substances are detectable by olfactory neurons in concentrations as low as 10 parts per billion, hydrogen sulfide being the most detectable.

“Cite?”, you may ask? About 40 some odd years ago as a young teen, I personally confirmed that I could light my own farts. Fortunately I didn’t get injured, as I’ve heard can happen.

Cite 2 is, I kid you not, Wikipedia’s page on fart lighting: Fart lighting - Wikipedia

I am confident there are YouTube demonstrations on this topic. It is left as an exercise to the reader to view them.

(And I pat myself on the back for all those [sub]SUBS[/sub] in those chemical equations.)

28828

Holstien cows are the most abundant dairy cattle in the USA, accounting for 90% of the nation’s 9-milion dairy cows. Six other breeds of milk cows recognized for the commercial diary market. Brown Swiss cows. In adition to farting, a dairy can can give 20,000 pounds of milk per year.

28829

Comment: methane is the link between posts 28,815 and 28,816. When I read “methane” it tripped a memory from my youth. Thank you, gkster, for that fond memory.

Edit: still in play –

28830

In play: the methane from cow farts contributes to global warming.

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1734

28831

Missed the edit window to add this.

In play: the methane from cow farts contributes to global warming.

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1734

From
Overview of Greenhouse Gases | US EPA,

28832

Cow fighting is a traditional Swiss event, in which a cow fights another cow. Each year, the Swiss canton of Valais hosts a series of cow fights known as combats de reines (“queen fights”), which began in the 1920s and has drawn as many as 50,000 spectators in a year. The winner is called La Reine des Reines (“the queen of queens”) and increases dramatically in value. Cows naturally fight to determine dominance in the herd, and this is the behavior that is exploited in cow fighting, using cows from the local Herens breed. With their horns blunted, the fights are mainly a pushing contest.

28833

Because the Epistle of James praises good works as a way to salvation, Luther referred to it as the “Epistle of Straw,” as it was contrary to Luther’s doctrine of salvation by faith alone.

28834

The controversy between Newton and Leibniz for priority as “inventor of calculus” overlooks that the first statement and proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus was by neither of them, but by the Scotsman James Gregory.

28835

The fundamental theorem of calculus (FTC) basically states that the derivative and integral are inverse functions. James Gregory proved the FTC in a very restricted case. Isaac Barrow proved a more generalized version. Isaac Newton, a student of Barrow’s, completed the development of the surrounding mathematical theory of the FTC. Gottfried Liebniz developed the notation we use today, d/dx, x’, x’’, and ∫.

28836

In 1968, Sunoco oil company expanded from the east coast into the midwest by merging with Oklahoma-based Sunray DX, gradually rebranding DX stations into Sunoco.

28837

On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo was seized by the Government of North Korea. It took eleven months to the day to negotiate their return, which occurred at “The Bridge of No Return” on 23 December 1968. The ship is still in the possession of the North Korean Government.

28838

Scriptwriter D.C. Fontana based the plot of her September 1968 Star Trek episode “The Enterprise Incident” on the Pueblo Incident. The episode was the second of Star Trek’s third and final original season.

28839

Pueblo, Colorado was the Saddle Making Capital of the World, until a series of major floods culminated in the Great Flood of 1921. Roughly one-third of Pueblo’s downtown businesses were lost in this flood, along with a substantial number of buildings.

28840

A Yemeni desalination project fueled by sunlight has been proposed to provide fresh water to Sana’a. A concentrated solar power plant would produce 10,000 GWh/year, and roughly one third would be used to provide desalination, and the remainder would be used for pumping.

28841

In planning his Salt March and choosing civil disobedience against the salt tax as a focus of anti-British protest, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life.”

28842

The Alan Parsons Project was a British progressive rock band, active between 1975 and 1990, although surviving cofounder Alan Parsons is touring again with a new band playing many of the group’s classic hits. The other cofounder, Eric Woolfson, was born in Glasgow in March 1945 and died in London in December 2009.

ETA “March” reference.

28843

Thomas Lipton, famed Glasgow tea tycoon, before being widely known for his tea, Lipton’s Tea, he was known for bacon. Lipton ran a shop in the Anderston area of Glasgow. Every single day, a couple of pigs were walked up from the docks at the Clyde to Lipton’s shop. The pigs wore a banner that read: “I’m on my way to Liptons – The Best Place in Town for Bacon.”.

28844

James Lipton is an American writer, lyricist, actor and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City. He is the executive producer, writer and host of the Bravo cable television series “Inside the Actors Studio”.

28845

James Lipton considers Loretta Lynn one of his best friends, an odd juxtaposition of personalities he mentioned when interviewing Tommy Lee Jones who played Lynn’s husband Doolittle in Coal Miner’s Daughter. Lipton and Lynn met when he produced a series of TV specials for her in the 1970s.

28846

Lynn Swann, best known as a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers (American football team) has also had a career as a broadcaster and was recently hired to serve as the next athletic director at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. He also ran for governor of the state of Pennsylvania in 2006, but lost the election.