January 2010
107 posts
List of linguistic example sentences →
del0shous:
If the police police police police, who polices the police police? Police police police police police police.
It was and I said not are and and and are are different.
But and and and and and and and and and so are all pairs of conjuctions.
Meet cute →
(via baseballbrat)
A meet-cute is a convention of screwball comedies and their heirs, the romantic comedies, the contrived encounter of two potential romantic partners in unusual or comic circumstances, a comic situation contrived by the filmmakers entirely in order to bring them together.
During a “meet-cute”, scriptwriters often create a humorous sense of awkwardness between the...
1 tag
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
– Parkinson’s Law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (via jericsinger)
Henrietta Lacks →
Henrietta Lacks (August 18 (?), 1920 – October 4, 1951) was the involuntary donor of cells from her cancerous tumor, which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create an immortal cell line for medical research. This is now known as the HeLa cell line.
By 1954, HeLa was used by Jonas Salk to develop a vaccine for polio. As stated by reporter Van Smith in 2002 a demand for HeLa cells “quickly...
tokophobia →
(via cirrusminor)
Primary tokophobia is the fear and deep-seated dread of childbirth which pre-dates pregnancy and can start in adolescence.
List of animals with fraudulent diplomas →
pkeen:
because you knew there had to be one.
“Dr.” Zoe D. Katze is a housecat owned by Steve K. D. Eichel, Ph.D., ABPP. Dr. Eichel was able to obtain several well-known hypnotherapy certifications as well as Board-certification (Diplomate) status with the American Psychotherapy Association for his cat.
Colton Harris-Moore →
Colton Harris-Moore (born March 22, 1991), better known as Colt in his home town, is an 18-year-old fugitive from Camano Island, Washington. He is suspected in the theft of at least three small aircraft, a boat, and a car, and in the burglaries of at least 50 private residences in various locations around the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada. Because he has been observed running...
quittheband:
The word “ghoti” is a phonetic spelling of “fish”, commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw as an example of the irregularities of English spelling. Pronunciation: the “GH” as in the word “rouGH”, “O” as in “wOmen” and “TI” as in naTIon.
“The blue hour comes from a French expression, l’heure bleue, which refers to the...”
– wikipedia (via leahgirl)
Defense Mechanism Fail
postscriptpages:
Armadillos are a commonly squashed animal because their first instinct to a threat (in this case, a car) is to jump in the air. The car does not stop, and therefore kills the animal.
(via wikipedia)
Sweating sickness →
Sweating sickness, also known as the “English sweate,” was a mysterious and highly virulent disease that struck England, and later continental Europe, in a series of epidemics beginning in 1485.
The disease began very suddenly with a sense of apprehension, followed by cold shivers (sometimes very violent), giddiness, headache and severe pains in the neck, shoulders and limbs, with...
Sky burial →
Sky burial or ritual dissection was once a common funerary practice in Tibet wherein a human corpse is cut in specific locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements or the mahabhuta and animals – especially to birds of prey.
In Tibet the practice is known as jhator, which literally means, “giving alms to the birds.”
(fair warning: some icky photos on the wiki...
List of stripped Olympic medals →
stuckinrepeat:
207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunk donkey attempt to eat figs.
www.wikipedia.com
History of juggling →
(via stumblinghorse)
Juggling was an acceptable diversion until the decline of the Roman Empire, after which it fell into disgrace. Throughout the Middle Ages most histories were written by religious clerics who frowned upon the type of performers who juggled, called ‘Gleemen’, accusing them of base morals or even practicing witchcraft.
Ross Rebagliati →
Rebagliati was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. He turned pro in 1991. He was the first ever to win an Olympic gold medal for this sport at the 1998 Winter Olympics. After winning the gold, he was found to have marijuana in his circulatory system and he was automatically disqualified. This decision was eventually overturned, largely on the basis that marijuana is not a performance-enhancing...
Konzo →
yaldabaoth:
Konzo (locally known as mantakassa in northern Mozambique) is an epidemic paralytic disease. The outbreaks are associated with several weeks of almost exclusive consumption of insufficiently processed bitter cassava. Outbreaks have mainly been reported among women and children in remote rural populations in East and Central Africa. The onset of paralysis (hypertonic paraparesis) is...
Illuminati Conspiracy Theory →
(via martzart)
Huldufólk →
Huldufólk, or Hidden People, are a part of Icelandic folklore. Building projects in Iceland are sometimes altered to prevent damaging the rocks where they are believed to live.
In 1982, 150 Icelanders went to the NATO base in Keflavík to look for “elves who might be endangered by American phantom jets and Awacs reconaissance planes.” In 2004, Alcoa had to have a government expert...
Organ Harvesting in China →
(via geneticmutations)
Of 60,000 organ transplants officially recorded between 2000 and 2005, 18,500 came from identifiable sources; the source of 41,500 transplant organs could not thus be explained. In 2007, Kilgour and Matas said that traditional sources of transplants such as executed prisoners, donors, and the brain dead “come nowhere near to explaining the total number of transplants...
Musical road →
A Musical road is a road, or part of a road, which when driven over causes a tactile vibration and audible rumbling transmitted through the wheels into the car body in the form of a musical tune.
The Civic Musical Road was built on Avenue K in Lancaster, California, United States, on 5 September 2008. Covering a quarter-mile stretch of road between 60th Street West and 70th Street West, the...
“2008: David Phyall, 58, the last resident in a block of flats due to be...”
– Wikipedia list on unusual deaths (via sbstout)
Mull of Kintyre test →
thehiso:
The Brits are much more creative in their decency standards than the United States (see the Miller test).
The BBFC would not permit the general release of a film or video if it depicted a phallus erect to the point that the angle it made from the vertical (the “angle of the dangle”, as it was often known) was larger than that of the Mull of Kintyre, Argyll and Bute, on...
Holi →
Holi, also called the Festival of Colors, is a popular Hindu spring festival. The main day, Holi, also known as Dhulheti, Dhulandi or Dhulendi, is celebrated by people throwing colored powder and colored water at each other.
Lead Masks Case →
The Lead Masks Case was the name given to the events which led to the death of two Brazilian electronic technicians: Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana. Their bodies were discovered on August 20, 1966.
The bodies were next to each other, slightly covered by grass. They were wearing suits, and impermeable coats. There was no sign of violence to the bodies or to the surrounding area. Next...
List of Crayola crayon colors →
camps:
I’m also pissed about thistle & raw umber.
Exploding animal →
topherchris:
Wikipedia is my favorite website because I can start by looking up actor Tony Hale and accidentally end up reading about exploding toads an hour later.
jstn:
Watch out for love waves.
Love waves take a long time to dissipate due to the huge amount of energy that they contain.
“In Chinese entertainment, music videos are simply known as MTVs because the...”
– Music video - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (via internetsnorkelwithzachrose)
