I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

Realt Dearg Sec · 04-02-2019 7:14am

Tell me how wrote: »

BaZmO* wrote: »

Given the night that’s in it;

Roman Numerals were introduced as the numbering system for Super Bowls to clarify any confusion that may occur because the NFL Championship Game—the Super Bowl—is played in the year following a chronologically recorded season, i.e. the Super Bowl that’s on at the moment is LIII (53) but it’s the culmination of the 2018 season.

Controversially, the only Super Bowl game to not use Roman numerals was Super Bowl 50 (2016)

The reason for this?
It was felt that marketing 'Superbowl 50' would be more successful than 'Superbowl L'. Whatever your views on Black/White/ Green is the dominant colour in US sports.

Also worth noting on this topic, the Superbowl is the single game play-off between the winners of the NFC and AFC divisional championships and has been held since 1967. The first two games were titled the 'World Championship Game' which is a bit cringeworthy for a national competition and in line with this the players receive rings (instead of medals) which are often inscribed with the words 'World Champions'.

(And I am on Boards right now because so far this years game is a pretty much non-eventful single score first half)

To be fair, I don't think there's likely to be some team elsewhere in the world likely to beat the Patriots in a game.

Chancer3001 · 04-02-2019 8:51am

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

To be fair, I don't think there's likely to be some team elsewhere in the world likely to beat the Patriots in a game.

The point is it would be like calling kilkenny (ir whoever) world champions in hurling . Instead of all Ireland chanpions

It would sound a bit ridiculous to have world championships in hurling and football every year no?

BaZmO* · 04-02-2019 9:54am

Chancer3001 wrote: »

The point is it would be like calling kilkenny (ir whoever) world champions in hurling . Instead of all Ireland chanpions

It would sound a bit ridiculous to have world championships in hurling and football every year no?

The American Baseball Championship is also called the World Series.

KevRossi · 04-02-2019 10:06am

Chancer3001 wrote: »

The point is it would be like calling kilkenny (ir whoever) world champions in hurling . Instead of all Ireland chanpions

It would sound a bit ridiculous to have world championships in hurling and football every year no?

London and New York are both in the football All Ireland championship. London played in a total of 5 finals from 1900-1908 and played in a Connacht final in 2013.

London also play in the National Football League.

New York have won 3 National Football Leagues.

Gaelic Football was a demonstration sport at the 1904 Olympics.

Chancer3001 · 04-02-2019 10:10am

Exactly. We would have more claims to calling it world champions than the nfl

My point is that it sounds ridiculous

Franz Von Peppercorn · 04-02-2019 10:14am

KevRossi wrote: »

London played in a total of 5 finals from 1900-1908 and played in a Connacht final in 2013.

If they had won there wouldn’t have been a cow milked in islington that night.

Buford T. Justice XIX · 04-02-2019 10:46am

BaZmO* wrote: »

The American Baseball Championship is also called the World Series.

America and Canada, with slightly different rules, and Mexico, with a newish league, would be the only countries that have major leagues in American Football.

Baseball is played in many countries, like Mexico, South Korea and Japan so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to call the winners World Champions.

seamus · 04-02-2019 10:58am

KevRossi wrote: »

Half of all Canadians live beneath the red line.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DybsVF6XQAAJm_J.jpg

And, if you extend the red line, eastwards...

https://i.imgur.com/deMCKZn.png

You can see that Ireland is considerably North of all those Canadians. Not to mention the entire continental USA (Alaska is even norther than us)

Quazzie · 04-02-2019 2:56pm

seamus wrote: »

And, if you extend the red line, eastwards...

https://i.imgur.com/deMCKZn.png

You can see that Ireland is considerably North of all those Canadians. Not to mention the entire continental USA (Alaska is even norther than us)

An interesting stat would be see are there more Americans (USA) living north of that line than Canadians?

blastman · 04-02-2019 3:12pm

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

And, as segregation was practiced in the city, Oscar winner, Hattie McDaniel who played Mammy, couldn't attend as she was coloured.

Not true, she did attend, although the Ambassador Hotel, where the ceremony was held, practiced segregation and the film's producer David O. Selznick had to petition in order that she be allowed to go. Even then, she sat at a table on her own except for her date, and could not join co-stars Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh at their table.

Her Oscar was given to Howard University when she died, but it went missing from the university in the early seventies and hasn't been seen since. There were many theories as to what happened, but the most likely reason for its disappearance is that it was simply moved to a different archive in the university and forgotten about. Because Oscars were plaques at the time Hattie McDaniel won hers, and not the statuettes we associate with the modern Oscars, it's possibly on a shelf somewhere, unrecognised for what it is.

It would be nearly 25 years before another African-American Oscar winner came along, when Sidney Poitier won in 1963 for Lilies Of The Field.

04-02-2019 3:21pm

blastman wrote: »

Not true, she did attend, although the Ambassador Hotel, where the ceremony was held, practiced segregation and the film's producer David O. Selznick had to petition in order that she be allowed to go. Even then, she sat at a table on her own except for her date, and could not join co-stars Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh at their table.

So alien and so heartbreaking.

'Rat Pack' performer Sammy Davis jr wasn't allowed to stay in the top Vegas hotels where he was the headline act. He also had to enter and leave through the kitchens or back doors of many of the venues he performed in.

Frank Sinatra was a very active racial equality campaigner, as was Marilyn Monroe who was instrumental in getting Billie Holliday the club spots that helped put her in the spotlight, by telling the owners that if they hired Holliday that she would sit in the front row every night and allow them to photograph her there for publicity, bringing publicity for them and acceptance for Holliday.

Wibbs · 04-02-2019 5:24pm

The Beatles had a stipulation in their contract that they wouldn't play to segregated audiences.

stimpson · 04-02-2019 5:33pm

Damaged euro coins that were taken out of circulation were sent to China as scrap metal. They used to separate out the centre core and ring and dispose of them to different recyclers. Some plucky Chinese figured out that they could press them back together and that Bundesbank would accept damaged coinage for free. They enlisted airline cabin staff who had no weight restrictions on luggage to ferry them back to Germany and exchange them for cash. They estimate that the scam ran for 6 years and cost the Germans €6 million. They were only found out when a member of cabin staff was struggling with a very heavy suitcase and discovered it to be full of coins.

StupidLikeAFox · 04-02-2019 6:37pm

Squall Leonhart wrote: »

Sticking with a Star Trek theme...

Albert Einstein appeared as a character in 2 episodes of The Next Generation, in 1991 and 1993.

Both times he was played by an Irish actor, one Mr Jim Norton.. Better known in this parish as Bishop Len Brennan from Father Ted!

You address me by my proper title ya little bollix

ArnoldJRimmer · 04-02-2019 7:04pm

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

You address me by my proper title ya little bollix

Was watching Frasier on Netflix last year, and was suprised when I saw him pop up in an episode of that too. Played a butler called Wentworth

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0582521/

Ipso · 04-02-2019 7:36pm

The actor who played the pilot in the episode where they were on the airplane played a judge in Batman Begins. Also in Batman Begins was King Joffrey and the singer from the band James.

New Home · 04-02-2019 8:09pm

Ignore the bottom part.

I don't know if either would be edible, though.

New Home · 04-02-2019 10:00pm

Why can't we take a leaf out of Sweden's book, instead of dumping so many recyclables?

Capt'n Midnight · 04-02-2019 10:01pm

New Home wrote: »

Ignore the bottom part.

https://funsubstance.com/uploads/original/285/285058.jpg

I don't know if either would be edible, though.

Defo not edible.

Be safer to be turn it into Bloody Mary's

Realt Dearg Sec · 04-02-2019 10:09pm

New Home wrote: »

Why can't we take a leaf out of Sweden's book, instead of dumping so many recyclables?

Because they recycled the book and are now importing leaves from Norwegian books.

New Home · 04-02-2019 10:16pm

StupidLikeAFox · 04-02-2019 11:59pm

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

Was watching Frasier on Netflix last year, and was suprised when I saw him pop up in an episode of that too. Played a butler called Wentworth

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0582521/

Here is a documentary about father ted where he is interviewed around the 6:30 mark - its amazing how well spoken and refined he is in person given the character that he plays:

mzungu · 05-02-2019 12:53am

The Soviet Union sent an unmanned spacecraft to the moon in an attempt to bring back lunar soil. It was in lunar orbit as Armstrong and Aldrin performed their famous spacewalk. It crashed on the lunar surface hours before the Apollo astronauts lifted off for their return to Earth.

Gwynplaine · 05-02-2019 1:11am

Ipso wrote: »

The actor who played the pilot in the episode where they were on the airplane played a judge in Batman Begins. Also in Batman Begins was King Joffrey and the singer from the band James.

Barry o Hamlin, Hughie, and Robbie from Fair City are in it too.

keane2097 · 05-02-2019 12:17pm

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

Was watching Frasier on Netflix last year, and was suprised when I saw him pop up in an episode of that too. Played a butler called Wentworth

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0582521/

He also appeared in a couple of episodes of the excellent sci-fi series Babylon 5 as some sort of judge.

New Home · 05-02-2019 12:50pm

Proportions probably not to scale, but interesting nevertheless.

BaZmO* · 05-02-2019 1:37pm

Adidas and Puma were formed by two brothers, Adolf "Adi" Dassler and Rudolf Dassler.

Adidas was founded by Adolf "Adi" Dassler who made sports shoes in his mother's scullery or laundry room in Herzogenaurach, Germany after his return from World War I. In July 1924, his older brother Rudolf joined the business, which became Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory (Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik).

The brothers split up in 1947 after relations between them had broken down, with Rudolf forming a new firm that he called Ruda – from Rudolf Dassler, later rebranded Puma, and Dassler forming a company formally registered as Adidas AG from Adi Dassler on 18 August 1949. Although it is a popular urban myth that the name is an acronym for All Day I Dream About Sports, that phrase is a "backronym"; the name is a portmanteau formed from "Adi" (a nickname for Adolf) and "Das" (from "Dassler").

Interestingly enough, in August 2005, Adidas acquired Reebok as a subsidiary, uniting two of the largest sport outfitting companies, but maintaining operations under their separate brand names.

Wibbs · 05-02-2019 1:46pm

Dunno if this was posted in t'other thread, but WD-40 was originally developed in the 1950's as a spray on coating to protect body of the Atlas rockets from corrosion that were first developed as missiles and then used by NASA to get payloads and astronauts into space. Another mad thing about them was the structure was so thin that it required pressurisation by fuel(or nitrogen) to stay rigid. If the tanks lost pressure the rocket would collapse like a deflated balloon.

Gloomtastic! · 05-02-2019 2:48pm

New Home wrote: »

Proportions probably not to scale, but interesting nevertheless.

No mention of cortisone?

Sleepy · 05-02-2019 5:04pm

New Home wrote: »

6 fingered family image

One of my mother's sisters was born with this mutation but doctors at the time saw fit to amputate her extra "pinkie" finger as a newborn.

On the baby teeth skull shot: a first cousin once removed of mine (on the other side of the family) was born with a really cool mutation whereby he had an extra set of adult teeth. It was only discovered when his teeth starting falling out in his early twenties and a perfect new set started to come through. He's in his 80's now and still has teeth worthy of a Colgate commercial despite never having had any non-routine dental work.

New Home · 05-02-2019 7:54pm

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

No mention of cortisone?

Not on that image, anyway.

New Home · 05-02-2019 7:54pm

New Home · 05-02-2019 8:06pm

Capt'n Midnight · 05-02-2019 10:25pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Another mad thing about them was the structure was so thin that it required pressurisation by fuel(or nitrogen) to stay rigid. If the tanks lost pressure the rocket would collapse like a deflated balloon.

It's called a balloon tank.

It meant you could make the fuel tanks much lighter so instead of having two stages you could use just a single stage. Well sort of , because you'd drop off some of the engines on the way up.

Russian rockets are a little more agricultural. When offloading one from a ship for a Paris Air Show, onlookers were shocked that the guy attaching the crane hooks was just walking along on top of the horizontal rocket. With an Atlas or Blue Streak you can deform the tank with a light push.

stimpson · 05-02-2019 11:17pm

The Darvaza gas crater, known locally as the "Door to Hell" or ''Gates of Hell", is a natural gas field collapsed into an underground cavern located in Derweze, Turkmenistan. Geologists set it on fire to prevent the spread of methane gas, and it is thought to have been burning continuously since 1971. The diameter of the crater is 69 metres (226 ft), and its depth is 30 metres (98 ft).

You can see it on Google Maps.

mzungu · 06-02-2019 12:45am

As part of an anti-drugs message aimed at school children in the US , there were pencils produced in the 1990s with the anti-drug slogan "Too Cool to Do Drugs." The only problem was that when the pencil was sharpened it would read "Cool to Do Drugs" and finally "Do Drugs." Unsurprisingly, they were recalled.

BhUx36nIUAASePA.jpg-large.jpeg?w=640&ssl=1

BhUx36nIUAASePA.jpg-large.jpeg?w=640&ssl=1

The Pheasant2 · 06-02-2019 1:14am

New Home wrote: »

Proportions probably not to scale, but interesting nevertheless.

Don't wanna be *that* guy but while very broadly correct this is fairly meaningless without specification of which neurological pathways they're referring to - for example the anxiety one; when applied to the nigrostriatial pathway in the brain would more be representative of Parkinson's disease.

New Home · 06-02-2019 1:16am

And that's also very interesting.

06-02-2019 5:27pm

There is a whole fleet of aircraft at the disposal of the POTUS, but only the one in use by the President at any given time is referred to as Air Force One. It's not the name of the aircraft, it's it's call sign.

06-02-2019 6:06pm

General anaesthetics not only block pain, they also cause amnesia. Patients can and do wake up and experience all the sensations involved with their surgery but it's very rare. Much more common is a half wakening that lasts a few seconds and is completely forgotten by the patient. Generals also cause what's called post-operative cognitive dysfunction, a general confusion and/or forgetfulness that resolves in hours. days or weeks. It's most notable in the over-65's, where it can endure longer.

More worryingly, studies carried out at Frances INSERM (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale) suggests a link between general anaesthesia and dementia in later life. Over nine thousand older post-op patients were cognitively evaluated at intervals of 3, 7 and 10 years post surgery, and found to be over 30% more likely to have developed a level of dementia than those who hadn't been administered a general over the age of 65.

Fourier · 06-02-2019 10:49pm

A team at the University of Durham and Florence have performed a very detailed study of quasars in the early universe which has possibly revealed that Dark Energy works in the craziest way people have suggested so far rather than the more mundane models of it just being some invisible energy filling the universe which has been more accepted until now.

According to the study Dark Energy is denser now than it was in the past:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0657-z (It's behind a pay wall, but just to show it's in Nature, the leading scientific journal)

If this result holds up it has a few weird possible consequences.

The precise measurements mean Dark Energy is some form of "fluid" with the right properties to hold open a wormhole throat.
It also means that around now (last 100 million years being cosmological "around now") natural wormholes will have begun to open.
Entropy doesn't necessarily increase until the universe is a homogenous inert soup.
Most fascinating to me, is that it allows the "Big Trip" end of the universe scenario, whereby billions of years from now a massive wormhole swallows the entire matter content of the universe, before the current one rips itself apart and deposits it "somewhere else" in a new universe.

Gimme A Pound · 06-02-2019 11:02pm

Two serial killers were born on consecutive February 29ths: Aileen Wuornos 1956, and Richard Ramirez (the night stalker) 1960.

(Now obviously why they turned out the way they did, is a tad more complex than due to being born on Leap Day

but I find it bizarre in a "What are the odds?" way).

mzungu · 07-02-2019 1:05am

Four out of Nepal's seven provinces don't have official names, and are just referred to as Province 1, Province 2, Province 3, and Province 5. The three provinces with names are Gandaki, Karnali and Sudurpashchim.

worded · 07-02-2019 1:39am

The endangered Siberian snow leopard can whistle but chooses not to ....

Cookie_Monster · 07-02-2019 4:11am

worded wrote: »

The endangered Siberian snow leopard can whistle but chooses not to ....

That sounds like a TopGear fact

07-02-2019 2:18pm

When New York City subway cars reach the end of their working life, they're taken to New Jersey and sunk off Ocean City beach to form an artificial reef.

Currently the fifteen reefs so far created have created about a square mile of substrate and the results have made it a popular area for fishing enthusiasts and divers and have eased fishing pressure in overfished grounds nearby. Populations of invertebrates and crustaceans have flourished.

redbird%20underwater.jpg

The long term plan is to form reefs all along the NJ coast to help keep populations up.

Artificial reefs aren't universally welcomed, and organizations including Ocean Conservancy express concern over the environmental impact of some of the materials used to form them, as well as the areas being prone to overfishing once the fish populations recover.

They don't always work, either. The cost/benefit ratio of a reef created off the coast of Florida is estimated to be 130/1, as a state of the art reef was sunk but no improvement in the fish stock or diversity has been tracked.

Conchir · 08-02-2019 2:05am

Candie wrote: »

There is a whole fleet of aircraft at the disposal of the POTUS, but only the one in use by the President at any given time is referred to as Air Force One. It's not the name of the aircraft, it's it's call sign.

Airplanes flown by the Air Force (i.e. the classic modified 747) yes

but if POTUS is flying in a helicopter, which he often does from the White House lawn, it’s flown by marines and called Marine One. Similarly with Navy, Army, and Coast Guard aircraft.

Navy One callsign has only been activated once I think, to fly Bush 2 to the USS Abraham Lincoln so he could announce “Mission Accomplished” after the Iraq invasion.

Army One hasn’t been active since the 70s, when the Army and the Marines used to share helicopter duties for the president. Since then it’s been solely the Marines.

Coast Guard One has never flown, but Coast Guard Two has. Any of these callsigns ending in Two instead of One are aircraft carrying the Vice President of the United States. Joe Biden flew in Coast Guard Two at some stage during his vice presidency, I think after a hurricane or flooding.

mzungu · 08-02-2019 2:07am

Have you ever walked into a room and forgot the reason why you were doing it?

This is known as the "Doorway Effect" and it is believed that walking through an open door and entering a new room creates a "mental block" in our brains and resets the memory to make room for the creation of new memories. It was previously suggested that these mental blocks came from not paying enough attention, but there now seems to be more at play.

The used video games to test the participants in the study:

Nueroscientists Gabriel Radvansky, Sabine Krawietz and Andrea Tamplin had participants play a video game in front of a computer screen in which they could move around using the arrow keys. In the game, they would walk up to a table with a colored geometric solid sitting on it. Their task was to pick up the object and take it to another table, where they would put the object down and pick up a new one. Whichever object they were currently carrying was invisible to them, as if it were in a virtual backpack.

Sometimes, to get to the next object the participant simply walked across the room. Other times, they had to walk the same distance, but through a door into a new room. From time to time, the researchers gave them a pop quiz, asking which object was currently in their backpack. The quiz was timed so that when they walked through a doorway, they were tested right afterwards. As the title said, walking through doorways caused forgetting: Their responses were both slower and less accurate when they'd walked through a doorway into a new room than when they'd walked the same distance within the same room.

Link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-through-doorway-makes-you-forget/?fbclid=IwAR14FtAob8W9Yicw3HPnNMdBuJeEEWy-ohMM7lLPR-Dozr4v9E5R_hAFkoQ

After the computer based test, they replicated the test in the lab and when participants walked through the door similar results were recorded. It would appear that the "doorway effect" occurs in both the real and the virtual world.

08-02-2019 2:15am

mzungu wrote: »

Have you ever walked into a room and forgot the reason why you were doing it?

This is known as the "Doorway Effect" and it is believed that walking through an open door and entering a new room creates a "mental block" in our brains and resets the memory to make room for the creation of new memories. It was previously suggested that these mental blocks came from not paying enough attention, but there now seems to be more at play.

The used video games to test the participants in the study:

After the computer based test, they replicated the test in the lab and when participants walked through the door similar results were recorded. It would appear that the "doorway effect" occurs in both the real and the virtual world.

This was explained to me as an assessment of each newly entered or re-entered environment, as the brain runs a checklist to make sure nothing has changed for the worse/that it's safe to venture further, causing the momentary blip that results in the distraction.

Looking in the fridge was an example used. You open the door of the fridge to asses it's contents or look for something, and your mind expects the doorway to open to a much larger arena and gets distracted looking for 'landmarks'. So you wind up closing the fridge without having really noted any of it's actual contents.

I guess it's the same thing; each assessment updates the information and removes the need to store the outdated version.

mzungu · 08-02-2019 2:31am

Candie wrote: »

This was explained to me as an assessment of each newly entered or re-entered environment, as the brain runs a checklist to make sure nothing has changed for the worse/that it's safe to venture further, causing the momentary blip that results in the distraction.

Looking in the fridge was an example used. You open the door of the fridge to asses it's contents or look for something, and your mind expects the doorway to open to a much larger arena and gets distracted looking for 'landmarks'. So you wind up closing the fridge without having really noted any of it's actual contents.

I guess it's the same thing; each assessment updates the information and removes the need to store the outdated version.

When I read it the first thing I thought of was the fridge. It happens way more than it should (and a bit with the freezer, too) and previously I always put it down to just not paying enough attention.

I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2

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