Any Port in a Storm
« Something I learned today »

Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register.
May 22, 2013, 3:35pm

[Home] [New Topics] [Help] [Search] [Login] [Register]


Port Authority | Landmarks
Africa | Asia | Europe | North and Central America | Oceania | South America | Post Cards | Ports of Call | Shipping Out
Image Bank | The Library | Maritime Museum | Where Words Collide | Change the Station | Screening Room | In the Spotlight
On the Menu | The Galley | After Dinner | Port & Starboard | Saving the World | Putting Down Roots | Back Pages
Free Trade Zone | Waterfront Park | The Arcade | The Science Dock | Free Clinic

Any Port in a Storm :: Around Town :: Free Trade Zone :: Something I learned today
Page 1 of 3 » Jump to page   Go    [Search This Thread][Reply] [Share Topic] [Print]
AuthorTopic: Something I learned today (Read 1,419 times)
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Something I learned today
« Thread Started on Oct 26, 2011, 2:35pm »		[Quote]
Here's a new idea for a thread where we can put little factoids that surprised or amused us recently.

Today I read that sperm continues to writhe around in the testicles several days after death.
« Last Edit: Mar 15, 2013, 10:50pm by kerouac2 »Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
foreverman
member is offline

[avatar]


[homepage]

Joined: Mar 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 264
Location: Esperance, Western Australia
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #1 on Nov 1, 2011, 10:58am »		[Quote]
Surely that should read 'before' death.................. ;D
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #2 on Nov 3, 2011, 6:43am »		[Quote]
Well, before their own death, if they can be considered to be alive.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #3 on Nov 6, 2011, 7:59pm »		[Quote]
[image]

[image]

[image]
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
bixaorellana
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 25,315
Location: Mexico
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #4 on Nov 9, 2011, 1:23am »		[Quote]
Pretty interesting stuff. I'd heard that about the bananas, but the other stuff is new. The pig picture is hysterical!
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #5 on Dec 22, 2011, 8:37am »		[Quote]
"KLM lets passengers pick seats by perusing Facebook profiles of other passengers."

I am aghast.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
mickthecactus
member is offline

[avatar]


[homepage]

Joined: Aug 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,801
Location: Herts, UK
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #6 on Dec 22, 2011, 9:02am »		[Quote]

Dec 22, 2011, 8:37am, kerouac2 wrote:
"KLM lets passengers pick seats by perusing Facebook profiles of other passengers."

I am aghast.


They'll have to search long and hard to find mine.............
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
tod2
member is offline





Joined: Apr 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,286
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #7 on Dec 22, 2011, 12:11pm »		[Quote]
Flippin' heck! Why don't they just advise them to go to seatguru.com and pick your seat that way ;)
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
rikita
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,752
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #8 on Dec 24, 2011, 11:50am »		[Quote]
well they won't find any facebook profile for me either - but just wondering, are they even allowed to give away the names or any other information of other passengers? couldn't they be sued for that?
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
spindrift
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 4,441
Location: England
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #9 on Dec 24, 2011, 3:35pm »		[Quote]
perhaps it is good news that some of us can choose who we want to sit next to for a 12 hour flight. I'd be delighted to meet a like-minded person 8-)

K? should that be 'whom;?
« Last Edit: Dec 24, 2011, 3:35pm by spindrift »Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
tempus fugit
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #10 on Dec 24, 2011, 4:04pm »		[Quote]
Yes it is whom! :D

I suppose that the KLM booking system just asks people "do you want to link this booking to your Facebook account?" -- and if you do, it allows them to deploy the other tricks.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #11 on Dec 28, 2011, 1:13pm »		[Quote]
They finally analyzed all of the death statistics of rock musicians and found that they have a 300% greater chance of dying than the general population. That will surprise no one.

Optimum age for dying turned out not to be the age of the members of "Club 27" but instead age 32.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
imec
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: May 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,379
Location: Winnipeg
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #12 on Dec 28, 2011, 4:25pm »		[Quote]

Dec 28, 2011, 1:13pm, kerouac2 wrote:
They finally analyzed all of the death statistics of rock musicians and found that they have a 300% greater chance of dying than the general population.


Um, you mean there's a chance the rest of us won't die?
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #13 on Dec 28, 2011, 6:12pm »		[Quote]
Er... I meant dying "prematurely." :P
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #14 on Jan 7, 2012, 6:31pm »		[Quote]
Actually I learned this a few days ago listening to the radio, but I filed it away as a totally fascinating concept.

A sociologist was talking about the creation of marriage vows way back whenever (he probably said the date, but I didn't catch it). He meant the bit about "fidelity" and "until death do us part" or however it is phrased in the various languages.

What he said was that these vows were created back when the life expectancy of a woman was age 30. This was of course due to all of the deaths in childbirth and such. But the main point was that when you swore lifelong fidelity and all of that other stuff back then, you were talking about 5-10 years in most cases.

Things have changed a bit.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
rikita
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,752
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #15 on Jan 10, 2012, 8:52am »		[Quote]
hm... if the life expectancy was 30 for women, did women only marry in their 20s then? if the marriages on average lasted only 5 to 10 years until one of them (by what you said usually the mother) died, does that mean the majority of children grew up as orphans or half-orphans?
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
bjd
member is offline





Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,991
Location: South-West France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #16 on Jan 10, 2012, 1:02pm »		[Quote]
I think that "life expectancy being 30" means that many people died young (as children) and others lived much longer. After all, life expectancy statistics are averages. So even if there were indeed more orphans, it isn't as dramatic as it sounds first off.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #17 on Jan 10, 2012, 1:17pm »		[Quote]
But huge numbers of women died in childbirth as well; men lived longer than women back then.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
bixaorellana
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 25,315
Location: Mexico
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #18 on Jan 10, 2012, 3:52pm »		[Quote]
The sociologist's reasoning is pretty specious. He's saying that a bunch of people co-writing the official marriage vows decided to take a look at actuarial tables, then said sure, the average Joe will be able to keep it in his pants for that long so we'll just write that fidelity part in.

Whereas it's undoubtedly true that more women died in childbirth in earlier times, men also dropped right & left from consumption or from job-related injuries and illnesses. And definitely those statistics reflect the much higher rate of infant mortality in an age where people had more children in general.

Actually, as a species humans were probably tougher in past times, since it was more than likely that only the most robust survived to reproduce and pass on their sturdy genes.

Re: orphans -- looking at genealogical records in any given family shows that people usually remarried after the death of a spouse. Economically and practically, it was often their only option, right up to fairly modern times.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kimby
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 5,368
Location: Montana & Florida, USA
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #19 on Jan 10, 2012, 6:22pm »		[Quote]

Jan 10, 2012, 3:52pm, bixaorellana wrote:
looking at genealogical records in any given family shows that people usually remarried after the death of a spouse. Economically and practically, it was often their only option, right up to fairly modern times.

I was just going to say that! And "blended families" is not a new concept. Those orphans were swiftly incorporated into a new marriage that often/always involved new half-siblings, if not step-siblings. And the new wives were often much younger than the husband, replacing the one who died in childbirth.

In my Dad's family, his uncle's wife died giving birth to twins, and Uncle Ray and the three older children came to live with my Dad's family of 4 kids, while the newborn twins were adopted out to a childless couple. A few years later Ray remarried and he and his 3 kids formed a new household with the new wife.

Years (decades) later, the twins were reunited with the rest of the family and still stay in touch with the family.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #20 on Jan 10, 2012, 6:27pm »		[Quote]
Don't forget Cinderella.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
bixaorellana
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 25,315
Location: Mexico
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #21 on Jan 10, 2012, 8:58pm »		[Quote]
What a fabulous real-life example, Kimby -- thanks!
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
rikita
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,752
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #22 on Jan 14, 2012, 8:11pm »		[Quote]
well if the 30 years life expectancy is an average, including deaths at childhood, then i would suppose the average marriage lasted for longer than 5 to 10 years though... (that was what i wanted to get to anyway... i think...)
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #23 on Jan 14, 2012, 9:44pm »		[Quote]
And that was the whole point of the sociologist. He was not necessarily suggesting that it was a good thing, but simply that certain "rules" laid down in olden times were difficult or impossible to follow. I am somewhat astonished at how people try to cling to certain things like this.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
auntieannie
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,224
Location: Greenest UK
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #24 on Jan 15, 2012, 12:49pm »		[Quote]
Riki, both my grand-fathers were orphans.

the paternal one I think was orphaned very young of both parents and he was fostered/adopted by another family. I know he had at least two sisters who must have been older as they went to work as maids in France. (and found husbands there). I don't know of other siblings.

My maternal grand father's father died accidentally a few weeks/days before my grandpa was born.
He was the last of 10 children and several of his brothers moved to the USA - he was supposed to join them but could never bring himself to do it. He decided to remain in Europe. His sisters married. I don't know if there was a step-father involved.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
Dans les grandes choses, les hommes se montrent comme il leur convient de se montrer; dans les petites, ils se montrent comme ils sont.
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #25 on Feb 2, 2012, 10:15am »		[Quote]
I was reading an article about Umberto Eco who has edited and made some corrections to The Name of the Rose. One of the things he removed was a reference to counting seconds, because seconds didn't exist in the Middle Ages.

I immediately looked it up and learned that seconds appeared on clocks during the last half of the 16th century.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
mickthecactus
member is offline

[avatar]


[homepage]

Joined: Aug 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,801
Location: Herts, UK
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #26 on Feb 2, 2012, 10:22am »		[Quote]
Seconds must have existed - it was just that nobody had found them...

I can never get my head round the fact that time didn't exist before the Big Bang.......
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
onlymark
Guest
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #27 on Feb 2, 2012, 11:49am »		[Quote]

Feb 2, 2012, 10:22am, mickthecactus wrote:
Seconds must have existed - it was just that nobody had found them...


A bit like Australia then.

I don't think much existed before the big bang, did it?
Maybe cockroaches as apparently they can survive anything.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
kerouac2
helper
*
member is offline

[avatar]



Joined: Feb 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,503
Location: Paris, France
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #28 on Feb 2, 2012, 12:09pm »		[Quote]
Actually, at the French revolution, when they wanted to change just about EVERYTHING that had ever existed, there was a proposal to abolish traditional timekeeping and to divide the day into a period of 10 hours of 100 minutes of 100 seconds. To make it work, they would have had to change the length of a second, and they were just not revolutionary enough. (Just for the record, today's date is 13 Pluviôse 220, according to the Revolutionary calendar.)

Considering how seemingly "obvious" the system that we use is with its ridiculous 24 hours, 60 minutes and 60 seconds, I wonder what it is like to teach timekeeping to primitive tribes in equatorial Africa, the Amazon or New Guinea. They must think that we are absolutely crazy!
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
mickthecactus
member is offline

[avatar]


[homepage]

Joined: Aug 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,801
Location: Herts, UK
Re: Something I learned today
« Reply #29 on Feb 2, 2012, 12:56pm »		[Quote]

Feb 2, 2012, 11:49am, onlymark wrote:

Feb 2, 2012, 10:22am, mickthecactus wrote:
Seconds must have existed - it was just that nobody had found them...


A bit like Australia then.

I don't think much existed before the big bang, did it?
Maybe cockroaches as apparently they can survive anything.


But time isn't a tangible thing. Surely it's always there no matter what?

Something goes bang and time starts. Can't grasp it.
Link to Post - Back to Top  IP: Logged
Page 1 of 3 » Jump to page   Go    [Search This Thread][Reply] [Share Topic] [Print]

site search by freefind advanced
free counters
Click Here To Make This Board Ad-Free


This Board Hosted For FREE By ProBoards
Get Your Own Free Message Boards & Free Forums!
Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Notice | FTC Disclosure | Report Abuse | Mobile