What's the most irrelevant fact you know?

[Pavlov's House Party]

The office of the Rex Nemorensis, a religious figure in the Roman Republic, could only be gained by challenging the previous title holder to single combat and killing them. Yeah, Ancient Rome was like Highlander.

[Pretty Flaco]

Although St. Patrick is known to be the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick himself was Welsh.

[the last donut of the night]

a hagfish's skull is mostly made up of fibrous cartilage

[Ele'ill]

hyenas are not canines they're marsupials

[Magón]

Zombies can only be killed with a shot to the head.

[Pirate Utopian]

Zombies can only be killed with a shot to the head.

Except in the first three Return of the Living Dead movies, where their bodies need to be intirely destroyed or else you'll still have crawling arms after you.
In the second movie electricity was shown to deactivate the trioxin thereby killing the zombies.

[HEAD ICE]

Marxism

[Jazzratt]

I'm not really sure I understand the premise of this thread. Irrelevance isn't intrinsic, it's contextual; facts have to be irrelevant to a given situation or set of situations. These facts aren't irrelevant they're simply only relevant in a small number of discussions or situations.

[Bandito]

The fact that hypos can't swim.

[Political_Chucky]

Through guided meditation, a Zen Buddhist Master(also mentions Benedictine Monks) will release the same amount of serotonin as a 100mg+ capsule of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine(Ecstasy)

[RedStarOverChina]

A Tibetan zen monk, after an hour of guided meditation, will produce the same amount of serotonin as a person who had ingested ecstasy.
Tibetans aren't Zen Buddhists. :thumbdown:

They're Tantric Buddhists.

[Political_Chucky]

Tibetans aren't Zen Buddhists. :thumbdown:

They're Tantric Buddhists.

Oppsies:blushing: I tried to remember exactly what I read. I'll get the book and edit the correct fact. Its from Tim Pilcher's "The Incredible Strange History of Ecstasy"

[RedStarOverChina]

Oppsies:blushing: I tried to remember exactly what I read. I'll get the book and edit the correct fact. Its from Tim Pilcher's "The Incredible Strange History of Ecstasy"
Eh forget about it. Who cares? I just love busting people's balls because it makes me look smart.

[Political_Chucky]

Meh well I hate to be proved wrong..:plol

[RedStarOverChina]

Oh yeah, another reason for busting your balls: you screwed me over on Cybernations a couple years ago.

[Political_Chucky]

I do not recall, but did you have it coming?

[RedStarOverChina]

Since you do not recall: no, I did nothing to deserve the psychological torment that you'd put me through.

[Political_Chucky]

Your nation of Red Star will soon get reparations for my inhumane way of treating you. I'm sorry :(

[RedStarOverChina]

Save your money, I don't even play anymore.

The whole thing went like this: we were all just beginners and you loaned me some money and I didn't give it back (I was going to---in a couple of months or something) so you felt cheated and thus attacked me. I fought back and kicked your ass. Then I kept your money. :lol:


How about that for some irrelevant facts.

[Magón]

Except in the first three Return of the Living Dead movies, where their bodies need to be intirely destroyed or else you'll still have crawling arms after you.
In the second movie electricity was shown to deactivate the trioxin thereby killing the zombies.

Yeah, that's definitely a more irrelevant fact. (And those movies were dumb. :D)

[Os Cangaceiros]

The technical term for the ball at the top of a flag pole is "truck".

[the last donut of the night]

the controversial proto-human language, theoretically proposed by some linguists as the mother of all human languages, has a SVO sentence structure -- IIRC this irrelevant fact.

[Il Medico]

That this thread exists.

[Political_Chucky]

Save your money, I don't even play anymore.

The whole thing went like this: we were all just beginners and you loaned me some money and I didn't give it back (I was going to---in a couple of months or something) so you felt cheated and thus attacked me. I fought back and kicked your ass. Then I kept your money. :lol:


How about that for some irrelevant facts.

You bastard LMAO...for real...you bastard!:laugh: I honestly don't remember(might be the drugs) but if it was me now, I woulda nuke'd your ass lol

[the last donut of the night]

That this thread exist.

that you forgot an s at the end of that verb

[Devrim]

the controversial proto-human language, theoretically proposed by some linguists as the mother of all human languages, has a SVO sentence structure -- IIRC this irrelevant fact.

Actually I think this is pretty interesting. SVO languages make up about 75% of the world's languages today. The second most common type is SOV, which includes Turkish.

In Turkish you therefore have:

Ali İstanbul'a gidiyör.

Literally Ali Istanbul to is going.

I once read a book that suggested that the division occurred before the development of language itself. Of course words came before what we would call a language with grammar, and certain primates have identifiable words. The book postulated that there is a basic 'choice' that was made on the road to language. Either we say 'eat food' (as in SVO) or 'food eat' (as in SOV)'.

From their onwards you are locked into a path. To give one example SVO languages tend to have prepositions, such as to Istanbul whereas SOV languages tend to have postpositions, such as İstanbul'a. Many other structural points of the language derive from this basic 'choice'.

Devrim

[Q]

Talking of CN:

- The Libertarian Socialist Federation is the oldest leftwing alliance in CN still in existence.
- I hold the title of the longest serving General Commissar in the history of The International (http://theinternational-cn.com/) (1 year exactly, or 6 terms). At the moment I hold no government position.
- I can't quit that stupid game.

[the last donut of the night]

Actually I think this is pretty interesting. SVO languages make up about 75% of the world's languages today. The second most common type is SOV, which includes Turkish.

In Turkish you therefore have:

Ali İstanbul'a gidiyör.

Literally Ali Istanbul to is going.

I once read a book that suggested that the division occurred before the development of language itself. Of course words came before what we would call a language with grammar, and certain primates have identifiable words. The book postulated that there is a basic 'choice' that was made on the road to language. Either we say 'eat food' (as in SVO) or 'food eat' (as in SOV)'.

From their onwards you are locked into a path. To give one example SVO languages tend to have prepositions, such as to Istanbul whereas SOV languages tend to have postpositions, such as İstanbul'a. Many other structural points of the language derive from this basic 'choice'.

Devrim

lol i myself too am pretty interested in linguistics. it was just a random fact i remembered. but i think the proto-human language was actually SOV, actually, now that IRC. i'd love to learn turkish, but it seems pretty hard

[Ele'ill]

That staying up all night talking with my roommate was a bad idea

[Devrim]

lol i myself too am pretty interested in linguistics. it was just a random fact i remembered. but i think the proto-human language was actually SOV, actually, now that IRC. i'd love to learn turkish, but it seems pretty hard

From Wiki:


Characteristics
The difficulty in making any statement on particulars of Proto-Human lies in the time depth involved, which is far beyond what linguists can trace back today (between five and ten millennia in the cases of Indo-European and Afroasiatic). Some linguists (e.g. Ruhlen 1994) claim that this difficulty can be overcome by means of mass comparison and internal reconstruction (cf. Babaev 2008).
The relatively few linguists who have discussed the subject disagree on how much can be known of the ancestor language. A conservative position, taken by Lyle Campbell, is that it would have shared the "design features" of known human languages, such as grammar, defined as "fixed or preferred sequences of linguistic elements", and recursion, defined as "clauses embedded in other clauses", but that beyond this nothing can be known of it (Campbell and Poser 2008:391). Less conservative linguists have advanced proposals on the vocabulary and syntax of the ancestor language. There are no serious current proposals on its grammar and phonology.
...
Syntax
In a 2003 paper, Murray Gell-Mann and Merritt Ruhlen argued that the ancestral language had Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order. The reason for thinking so is that the world's major language families nearly all reconstruct back to SOV word order in their earliest stages. Their proposal develops an earlier one made by Talmy Givón (1979:271-309).
If this thesis is correct, it would have wide-ranging implications. Since a key article by Joseph Greenberg in 1963, it has been known that SOV word order is commonly associated with a series of other phenomena (Gell-Mann and Ruhlen 2003:3-4). Among these, some of the most important are:
Adjectives precede the nouns they modify.
Dependent genitives precede the nouns they modify.
"Prepositions" are really "postpositions", following the nouns they refer to.
For example, instead of saying The man goes to the wide river, as in English, Proto-Human speakers would have said Man wide river to goes.

You can see a trace of SOV in some old English phrases that are in use today due to tradition, for example:

With this ring I thee wed

Devrim

[Quail]

Talking of CN:

- The Libertarian Socialist Federation is the oldest leftwing alliance in CN still in existence.
- I hold the title of the longest serving General Commissar in the history of The International (http://theinternational-cn.com/) (1 year exactly, or 6 terms). At the moment I hold no government position.
- I can't quit that stupid game.

My nation died from inactivity. I never really had time to play properly. I was in the LSF though. :)

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

On 25th July 2101, Neptune will be approximately 30 AU from the Earth. This means that a brachistochrone (http://everything2.com/user/locke+baron/writeups/brachistochrone) trajectory at 1G acceleration/deceleration would take approximately 15 and a half days.

Better pack some sandwhiches.

[the last donut of the night]

From Wiki:



You can see a trace of SOV in some old English phrases that are in use today due to tradition, for example:

With this ring I thee wed

Devrim

makes sense now. does turkish always follow the SOV pattern?

[Devrim]

makes sense now. does turkish always follow the SOV pattern?

Basically, yes. There are many sentences that don't use a subject, for example.

Seni seviyorum

literally, 'You love', in real translation 'I love you'.

What is happening here is that the verb 'Sevmek' uses a suffix 'um', which makes it first person singular, so we don't actually need to use the subject in every sentence as it is clear from the verb ending. In this case it appears that the structure is just OV, but the subject is implicit.

However, we could also say:

Ben Seni seviyorum.

Here we use the subject I (Ben), and we have the normal order SOV. It is used to put emphasis on the subject.

Does that make sense?

Devrim

[gorillafuck]

That staying up all night talking with my roommate was a bad ideaStaying up and talking with people you're close to is usually a worthwhile experience, though.

On topic, probably something so irrelevant to anything that it completely slips my mind.

[Pirate Utopian]

Yeah, that's definitely a more irrelevant fact. (And those movies were dumb. :D)

The first two were fun.

[Panda Tse Tung]

Humblebees ( ? ) of the male gender explode after sex.

[Os Cangaceiros]

*There are five sub-species of salmon (red, pink, chum, coho, chinook)
* The bowline is probably the most useful knot in the world. Everyone should know how to tie one.
* A fathom is six feet.

Three irrelevant facts related to my former position.

[ZeroNowhere]

There are many sentences that don't use a subject, for example.This also happens in Spanish, for example, albeit in SVO form rather than SOV.

[the last donut of the night]

This also happens in Spanish, for example, albeit in SVO form rather than SOV.

same in portuguese. in fact i think all romance languages use this feature, seeing their verbs carry the meaning pretty well.

as to devrim: in most indo-european languages, the verb usually takes the central role of the sentence. is it the same way in turkish or other turkic languages?

[Devrim]

as to devrim: in most indo-european languages, the verb usually takes the central role of the sentence. is it the same way in turkish or other turkic languages?

I am not sure what you mean by this,of course the verb is important, but it is always at the end of the sentence.

Devrim

[Princess Luna]

Benito Mussolini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini) is named after Benito Juarez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Ju%C3%A1rez) and the fact everything is irrelevant.

[ZeroNowhere]

Medvedev shares his birthday, September 14th, with the Earth on the cosmic calendar.

[the last donut of the night]

I am not sure what you mean by this,of course the verb is important, but it is always at the end of the sentence.

Devrim

Well, some languages -- such as Japanese, for example -- sometimes omit the verb in the sentence, if the context is clear enough. This is impossible in Portuguese, for instance. The verb carries most of the meaning of the sentence.

[Dimentio]

Charles XII had a dog named Pompe. Did you know that?

[BeerShaman]

In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.

The pigs have so many orgasms and the lion have so long orgasms that if a male animal could be born by their mating, 24 hours a day wouldn't be enough for it to f**k.

[Devrim]

Well, some languages -- such as Japanese, for example -- sometimes omit the verb in the sentence, if the context is clear enough. This is impossible in Portuguese, for instance. The verb carries most of the meaning of the sentence.

I can't quite understand what this means. How can you omit the verb and the 'context be clear'. In spoken Turkish the verb 'to be' is often omitted from sentences, but is included in formal writing, but only the be verb.

Could you give an example (with a literal translation of course) of something like this in Japanese, please.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

as to devrim: in most indo-european languages, the verb usually takes the central role of the sentence. is it the same way in turkish or other turkic languages?

I believe Cypriot Turkish differs from standard Turkish in sentence structure.



Cypriot Turkish is structured as VO language (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/VO_language) as oppose to standard Turkish which is OV language (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/OV_language). It is very typical in forming a question.

Standard Turkish "Okula gidecek misin?" in Cypriot Turkish "Gideceñ okula?" (Will you go to school?)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypriot_Turkish

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Zombies can only be killed with a shot to the head.

this is possibly the most useful thing anyone of us will ever know
hardly irrelevent

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

same in portuguese. in fact i think all romance languages use this feature, seeing their verbs carry the meaning pretty well.

as to devrim: in most indo-european languages, the verb usually takes the central role of the sentence. is it the same way in turkish or other turkic languages?

it's a not a lack of a subject
the subject is explicit in the verb

[revolution inaction]

Well, some languages -- such as Japanese, for example -- sometimes omit the verb in the sentence, if the context is clear enough. This is impossible in Portuguese, for instance. The verb carries most of the meaning of the sentence.

are you sure you don't mean the subject? or maybe the object? My japanise is extremely limited but it seems everything but the verb can be omitted, rather then the reverse.

[Le Libérer]

Came in on the end so I dont know if its been said or not, but the most relevant thing I know is that the most relevant thing I know, will not be relevent in a 100 years.

[Il Medico]

that you forgot an s at the end of that verb
That I did, fixed.

[Jazzratt]

Both of the actors playing the titular protagonists of Withnail & I have also played the doctor; Paul McGann was the 8th doctor and Richard E Grant played "a" Doctor on television and in a 2003 special animated webcast.

It's not very obscure but it is really of very limited relevance.

[Il Medico]

Both of the actors playing the titular protagonists of Withnail & I have also played the doctor; Paul McGann was the 8th doctor and Richard E Grant played "a" Doctor on television and in a 2003 special animated webcast.

It's not very obscure but it is really of very limited relevance.
Thats kinda cool actually.

[Pavlov's House Party]

Came in on the end so I dont know if its been said or not, but the most relevant thing I know is that the most relevant thing I know, will not be relevent in a 100 years.
On that note; unless you accomplish something noteworthy, no one will remember you 50 years after you die.

[ColonelCossack]

that antarctica is the driest desert on earth- parts of the continent have not seen rain for over four million years.

also my hands smell of pebbles covered in sea water.

also all halogens have 7 electrons in their outer shell

also that the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy can never decrease in a closed space

also that the messier cataligue number for the andromeda galaxy is M31

also that people born in tokyo are also called edo-ko, or children of edo

also that the quantum physicist David Bohm was accused of various an american activities

also that burkina faso, the ivory coast and togo all border ghana

also that the english word for china may come from the pronounciation of the name of the first dynasty of china- qin (chin)

also that ancient cuneiform picture writing was commonly made using a wedge a
shaped stick

also that im a 14 year old with WAY too much time on his hands and SERIOUSLY needs a girlfriend... bye!
:bored:

[Amphictyonis]

These days pretty much everything. Most people I talk to at work think I'm speaking a different language when politics/economics comes up in conversation. I think they hear this:

ihgcidhiue i;bfwehf; jhef;oehf[jhg]irjg]iar i.

All in slow motion of course. Backwards.

[praxis1966]

The indentation on the bottom of a wine bottle is called a "punt."

Supposedly, the reason James Bond took his martinis "shaken, not stirred" was because the process of shaking causes a greater amount of ice to dissolve into his drinks, thus allowing him to remain sharp when ass kicking time rolled around.

The process of distillation was invented in Ireland. Hence, this may be the reason the Scots converted to Christianity as it was Irish missionaries who, according to legend, introduced simultaneously whisky and Catholicism to Scotland. In other words, the Scots likely thought Catholicism a grand religion once they tasted its byproducts.

Soy beans are named for soy sauce, not the other way round.

Ketchup originally comes from China.

The first vacuum cleaner was made by Hoover, weighed 45 lbs, and plugged into a light bulb socket (usually mounted in the ceiling) as most houses were only wired for electrical lighting, not appliances, at the time of its invention.

Come to think of it, most of the useless knowledge I have relates to food and booze.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Neith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neith_%28moon%29) is the name given to a supposed moon of Venus.

[Thirsty Crow]

same in portuguese. in fact i think all romance languages use this feature, seeing their verbs carry the meaning pretty well.

Not only in Romance language, but in Slavic too. V(suffix)+O.

[Fulanito de Tal]

Now, this concept.


I'm not really sure I understand the premise of this thread. Irrelevance isn't intrinsic, it's contextual; facts have to be irrelevant to a given situation or set of situations. These facts aren't irrelevant they're simply only relevant in a small number of discussions or situations.

[La Comédie Noire]

The trash bin in front of my house is brown.

[Political_Chucky]

My penis is 2 inches....from the GROUND!

[Broletariat]

My penis is 2 inches....from the GROUND!

While laying face down.

[RedStarOverChina]

While laying face down.
Sick burn.

[ZeroNowhere]

also all halogens have 7 electrons in their outer shell

also that the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy can never decrease in a closed spaceWait, periodicity and the laws of thermodynamics are irrelevant?

[Bandito]

that antarctica is the driest desert on earth- parts of the continent have not seen rain for over four million years.

also my hands smell of pebbles covered in sea water.

also all halogens have 7 electrons in their outer shell

also that the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy can never decrease in a closed space

also that the messier cataligue number for the andromeda galaxy is M31

also that people born in tokyo are also called edo-ko, or children of edo

also that the quantum physicist David Bohm was accused of various an american activities

also that burkina faso, the ivory coast and togo all border ghana

also that the english word for china may come from the pronounciation of the name of the first dynasty of china- qin (chin)

also that ancient cuneiform picture writing was commonly made using a wedge a
shaped stick

also that im a 14 year old with WAY too much time on his hands and SERIOUSLY needs a girlfriend... bye!
:bored:

...and probably everyone sniffed their hands after reading this.

[praxis1966]

...and probably everyone sniffed their hands after reading this.

I know I did. Power of suggestion and all that. It's like yawning just because someone else does, or yawning just because you read something about yawning. (I wonder how many people will yawn because of this post.)

[Red Bayonet]

An Erg is the amount of energy expended by a beetle in climbing a wall one centimeter high. It is also the amount of energy generated in 24 hrs by Lindsay Lohan's brain.

[Panda Tse Tung]

I know I did. Power of suggestion and all that. It's like yawning just because someone else does, or yawning just because you read something about yawning. (I wonder how many people will yawn because of this post.)
:glare: I hate it when people do things like that.