"Come away O human child!To the waters of the wild, With a faery hand in hand, For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand."
W.B.Yeats
"If it looks like a Dwarf and smells like a Dwarf, then it's probably a Dwarf (or a latrine wearing dungarees)"
Artemins Fowl and the Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
my poems-please comment Forum Rules
^ Me too! I swear I'm going to catch one the next time I go, because my brother doesn't believe they exist.
Who the hell discovered this? And how? Is some sicko out there deliberately mercury-poisoning birds and then tracking them to find about their love lives?Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Can a Welsh litnetter confirm this for us?2. Penguin is a Welsh word.
I want to witness this.Originally Posted by Gilliatt Gurgle
Ecce quam bonum et jocundum, habitares libros in unum!
~Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
1. Princess Diana had two wedding dresses.
2. President Kennedy's famous line "Do not ask..." was inspired by the headmaster of his prep school.
3. Fourteen-year-olds build successful iTunes apps.
4. Justin Webb's father was a BBC newsreader.
5. "Filthy lucre" and at least 256 other distinct phrases from the King James Bible are in modern English idiom.
6. There have been a number of suggested 13th signs of the Zodiac over the years.
7. Phone books are getting thinner.
8. Birds make "No trespassing" signs.
9. Smoking damages the body in minutes.
10. Chess playing stimulates different brain activity.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...st_w_170.shtml
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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January
Named after the Roman god of beginnings and endings Janus (the month Januarius).
February
The name comes either from the old-Italian god Februus or else from februa, signifying the festivals of purification celebrated in Rome during this month. (februare, Latin: to purify CB)
March
This is the first month of the Roman year. It is named after the Roman god of war, Mars.
April
Called Aprilis, from aperire, "to open". Possible because it is the month in which the buds begin to open.
May
The third month of the Roman calendar. The name probably comes from Maiesta, the Roman goddess of honor and reverence.
June
The fourth month was named in honor of Juno. However, the name might also come from iuniores (young men; juniors) as opposed to maiores (grown men; majors) for May, the two months being dedicated to young and old men.
July
It was the month in which Julius Caesar was born, and named Julius in his honor in 44 BCE, the year of his assassination. Also called Quintilis (fifth month).
August
Originally this month was called Sextilis (from sextus, "six"), but the name was later changed in honor of the first of the Roman emperors, Augustus (because several fortunate events of his life occurred during this month).
September
The name comes from septem, "seven".
October
The name comes from octo, "eight"
November
The name comes from novem, "nine".
December
The name comes from decem, "ten".
Might be one or two you didn't know
1. Polar bears can swim for nine days.
2. Tony Blair never had a mobile phone as prime minister.
3. JD Salinger was a big fan of Tim Henman.
4. Prince Philip almost became a coal miner for a month.
5. Social networks may date back as early as the 1970s.
6. The kilogram doesn't weigh as much as it used to.
7. Huskies can smell thin ice.
8. Kelly Hoppen used to be Sienna Miller's stepmother.
9. Many Kenyans think twins are cursed.
10. Pigeons can smell their way home hundred of miles.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...st_w_171.shtml
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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They may need life jackets then, judging from the way their ice cap is melting.
How very sensible of him. I suppose he avoided the odd SMS wakeup that way.
Good for Henman
I wonder if he was in a black mood?
Errrr... I am pretty certain that we had social networks before the 70's. It's just that they were not computerized, that's all...
Right. Apparently it has lost fifty-millionths of a gram. Imagine the impact on weight watchers worldwide
That would seem like a useful ability considering where they perform their daily chores.
Really? Whose stepmother is she now?
Small wonder. Judging from myself I think I would be hard pressed to stand myself in duplicate.
I always thought their nests packed a bit of a pong. Do they never clean their messes up?
About birds binge drinking:
Birds... Agile creatures with lightning reflexes, never missing a beat, right? Wrong! They do make the occasional mistake, and sometimes leave very literal evidence of the fact. I can show you a result. This picture was taken in central Eskilstuna a few years back:
/Claes
Last edited by ClaesGefvenberg; 01-31-2011 at 07:04 AM.
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Birds' brains actually shrink in flight to make their heads lighter and therefore aerodynamic and thence also run on the autopilot of instinct, but when big, immovable, and invisible things get in their way, they crash - and whose laughing now you little show-offs?
Thing with flight though - you can understand why they sacrifice their tiny minds in order to do it - you wouldn't want to think about what you were actually doing: have you seen how hight they fly?
Another thing about our birdbrained friends is the drinking I witnessed where I used to live - they pick at the apricots in the morning so they'd ferment throughout the day, and come back for the juice/beverage in the afternoon
Elephants likewise do this with berries which they knock from the bushes in the morning, but in the afternoon they eat the whole fruit and deposit the seeds farther afield than they could travel by simply dropping to the ground - along with monkeys this provides another example of symbiosis
1. Mark Zuckerberg has watched The Social Network
2. Chewing gum can be used to make counterfeit keys.
3. Parrots are left and right-handed.
4. The average hug lasts three seconds.
5. Angry tarantulas kick tiny, stinging hairs off their bodies at predators.
6. Good cops are better at getting confessions than bad cops.
7. One in 10 of the world's adults is obese.
8. Chimpanzees grieve.
9. A water flea 2mm long has 50% more genes than a human.
10. Graffiti existed in the 19th Century.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...st_w_172.shtml
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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1) Mark Zuckerberg Mark Schmuckerberg
2) Pretty soft keys
3) Parrots have teeny little hands but choose to write with the right, right?
4) Three seconds is an aeon if you don't want to be hugged
5) Tarantulas have emotions?
6) Good cops?
7) Fatsos are great!
8) All mammals grieve - it's part of the make-up, you just can't tell that a cow or horse or rat is grieving. [Interesting sidenote - an island in the South Pacific has vegetarian skink lizards that have taken to the trees like monkeys and have curly tails for hanging on and swinging from branch to bough - but what's really cool is they've evolved a social structure similar to a group of monkeys: the only reptiles to get along like this]
9) Fleas with high compression ratios in their genes as well?
10) Graffiti also existed in the 18th, 17th, 16th, you name it th centuries - but not until the late 20th was it perpetrated with spraycan and sharpie
1. David Hasselhoff is a friend of Morecambe Tory MP David Morris.
2. Where you look affects how much pain you feel.
3. Elton John has no mobile phone.
4. Feeding garden birds makes them have a lie-in.
5. There is no minimum age at which UK children can be left on their own.
6. Horses can enjoy pints too.
7. Ravens get stressed when they join juvenile gangs.
8. Catholics are banned from confessing via iPhone.
9. Pessimism could be genetic.
10. Cattle once regularly swam between Hebridean islands.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...st_w_173.shtml
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
1. The paint on an average Easyjet plane weighs 80kg
2. Silvio Berlusconi has appeared in 106 trials, racking up more than 2,500 court appearances, he says.
3. MPs still have to do jury service.
4. There is no central sex offenders register in the UK.
5. Ancient Britons drank out of skulls.
6. You needed a permit to carry a sword or dagger in Italy in the early 1600s.
7. Incan brides had to peel a potato to prove they would be a good wife.
8. The first recorded use of OK was on 23 March 1839 on the second page of the Boston Morning Post.
9. The black bear's heart stops for up to 20 seconds when it exhales breath during hibernation and starts again when it inhales.
10. Wheelchairs can be controlled by thought.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...st_w_174.shtml
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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1. The Queen has a washer-up.
2. Robots do marathons.
3. Monkeys have self-doubt.
4. Artist LS Lowry was a debt collector.
5. Postal workers get through two million red rubber bands per day.
6. Nudity is banned on Facebook.
7. Blind people can regain sight.
8. Alligators hide behind sofas.
9. Wheelchairs can be controlled by thought.
10. Capuchin monkeys wash using urine.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...hings_18.shtml
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
1. Kenya's MPs aren't allowed to wear bling.
2. People with full bladders make better decisions.
3. Killer whales have a "stealth mode".
4. Finnish men have have some of the highest sperm counts in the world.
5. The ransom paid to release Richard the Lionheart, captured in 1192 on his way back from fighting the Crusades, was the equivalent of about £2bn in today's money.
6. Parents exaggerate the joy of having children to justify the sky-high cost of bringing them up.
7. The Mr Men and Little Miss series have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.
8. There are 16 amateur superheroes patrolling UK streets at night.
9. The average time Britons have their first alcoholic drink in the evening is 7.11pm.
10. Britain's biggest bird of prey is the white-tailed (or sea) eagle, which has a wingspan of eight feet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinem...st_w_175.shtml
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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