Tidbits picked up here and there (trivia, etc.)

[pipistrelle]

Mary Ward (née King; 27 April 1827 – 31 August 1869) was an Irish naturalist, astronomer, microscopist, author, and artist.She was killed when she fell under the wheels of an experimental steam car built by her cousins. As the event occurred in 1869, she is the first person known to have been killed by a motor vehicle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ward_(scientist)

[Suranis]

When "Monty Python's The Life of Brian" was released in Sweden, it was marketed as "the film so funny it was banned in Norway."

[pipistrelle]

Probably well known to serious Doctor Who fans but news to me.

Troughton started living a double life when, just after* the birth of his third child in 1955, he chose to leave Dunlop and their three children (then aged eight, five, and a few months) to live with girlfriend Ethel Margaret "Bunny" Nuens, with whom he also went on to have three children. Troughton maintained the deception of having stayed with his original family that was so successful that his own mother died unaware of the separation in 1979, 24 years after Troughton had left Dunlop. Due to the disastrous drama Troughton caused during his divorce from Dunlop, his first daughter, Joanna, vowed never to speak to her father again. Their differences remained unresolved at the time of his death in 1987. While Troughton never married Nuens, in 1976 he did marry Shelagh Holdup and acquired two stepchildren.

* One source said 10 months.

[Sam the Centipede]

When "Monty Python's The Life of Brian" was released in Sweden, it was marketed as "the film so funny it was banned in Norway."

Norway and Sweden have a brotherly history of joshing with each other. There was an amusing but reasonably good-natured dispute about import rules for sausages (really!) about ten years ago. Norwegian television news interviewed a Swedish customs official, carefully positioned for context in from of a customs booth with its sign. The Norwegian (and Danish) word for Customs (in this context) is Toll. The Swedish (as you all know these Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible) word is similar, Tull. So there it was, large and on the sign behind the Swedish official.

But Tull in Norwegian means "nonsense". I suspect the positioning was not accidental!

[Suranis]

https://www.reference.com/world-view/sa ... b67c23049b

Why Do We Say “silly Goose”?
By Staff WriterLast Updated April 10, 2020

The expression “silly goose” refers to a person who acts in a childish, foolish but somewhat comical way. This term originates from several sources. The entry in the Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable states, “A foolish or ignorant person is called a goose because of the alleged stupidity of this bird.” The Samuel Johnson dictionary describes geese as, “Large waterfowl proverbially noted, I know not why, for foolishness.”

The perception of geese as being particularly stupid and emblematic of foolishness has four possible sources. One source is their ungainly, waddling walk, which makes them look clumsy when on land, despite their grace in the water. The second source is that the goose was the emblem for a vain or silly man in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. The third source is that the goose is often portrayed as being the unwise or gullible one in fairy tales and fables, such as “The Fox and the Goose”. The fourth source comes from the fact that male geese often overreact to perceived competition from other males. If their mates come too close to another male, the angry goose will stand in between them, comically waggling its wings and making hissing sounds to deter his rival.

[Reality Check]

When "Monty Python's The Life of Brian" was released in Sweden, it was marketed as "the film so funny it was banned in Norway."

Norway and Sweden have a brotherly history of joshing with each other.

I spent the better part of a year working in Norway on a project. There were also Danes and maybe a few Swedes on the project. One thing I found is that the Danes considered themselves at the top of the pecking order of the Scandinavian countries. Part of this is because Norway was part of Denmark until the early 20th century. The Danes also looked down upon the Norwegians because before oil was discovered in the North Sea Norway's industries were mostly farming and fishing and the country was so rocky farming wasn't that profitable. Oil changed all that. Norway was dripping in money but the Danes never gave up their attitude of superiority at least when they were out of earshot of the Norwegians.

[Volkonski]

Norway was part of Sweden from 1814 to 1905.

Or perhaps you could say Sweden and Norway were two nations that shared a single monarch and foreign relations.

[Frater I*I]

Norway was part of Sweden from 1914 to 1905.

Or perhaps you could say Sweden and Norway were two nations that shared a single monarch and foreign relations.

And it appears they mastered time travel as well...

[Volkonski]

Opps.

[jez]

Norway was part of Sweden from 1914 to 1905.

Or perhaps you could say Sweden and Norway were two nations that shared a single monarch and foreign relations.

And it appears they mastered time travel as well...

Never know. He could have meant BCE?

[Sam the Centipede]

Oil changed all that. Norway was dripping in money but the Danes never gave up their attitude of superiority at least when they were out of earshot of the Norwegians.

Dutch folk can be a little like that too, but to all other Europeans!

You're right, of course, Norway was unimportant to others until oil, just fishin'n'farmin'. But the oil boom was very much not just about the money, it kicked off a lot of industry and expertise. The shipbuilding industry moved into rig and platform construction (which UK shipyards didn't so much with their boom), engineering companies and expertise ramped up, relevant education increased. We have mentioned DNV (Det Norske Veritas) in the Titan semi-sub thread: DNV was always an important ship classification society, but it embraced the offshore industry more than any other European classification society (Lloyds Register of Shipping, Bureau Veritas, etc.) and DNV-GL (as it now is after a, ah, merger? with Germinischer Lloyds) is now definitively the leading outfit for marine engineering, including wind generators and other novel structures. So there and in other companies there are attractive careers for enthusiastic engineers in the country, who would otherwise be "brain-drained" away.

I wonder too though how much language and accents play a part in attitudes. If you can read Norwegian, you can easily read Danish, and vice versa. Norwegian has had spelling reforms, whereas Danes have never bothered, so their spelling is a little muddier, but eyes quickly adjust. But spoken, the languages sound different (of course each country has local accents too). Norwegian is tonal, as is Swedish, whereas Danish is not tonal and has similar stress patterns to English. Danish also uses different pronunciations of consonants: I won't bore you with the phonetics, but to English ears it's probably fair to say that Norwegians accents pronounce the consonants as written, whereas Danish drops, glides and stops lots of them, and varies more according to phonotactic context, sounding more messy.

So I think Norwegian can sound to Danish ears as though someone stupid is talking very slowly and carefully, sort of hill-billyish? I'm not Danish, so I can't really say.

[Dave from down under]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-21/ ... /102623922

Singapore has overtaken Japan as the world's most powerful passport — but where does Australia rank?

Every year, the world's passports are ranked according to how much power they wield.

And Australia's just got more powerful.

International citizen assistance firm, Henley & Partners, unveiled the list for 2023, and there's been a big shake-up in the number-one spot.

How are passports ranked?
The Henley Passport Index is based on how many places people with those passports can access without a visa.

But the total score also includes countries that require passport holders to obtain a visa upon arrival, a visitor's permit or an electronic travel authority.

Henley & Partners bases its score out of 227 destinations, which includes countries as well as areas that aren't technically classified as countries, such as Taiwan.

However, it only ranks 199 passports.

The firm uses exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association to compile the index.


me: see article for rankings etc

[AndyinPA]

Interesting.

[raison de arizona]

IMG_5630.jpeg (61.66 KiB) Viewed 748 times

[Estiveo]

Since the Mississippi River goes through Arkansas, I'd hardly call it landlocked.

[sugar magnolia]

Since the Mississippi River goes through Arkansas, I'd hardly call it landlocked.

Not exactly "through." It's their eastern border.

[northland10]

Just a minor quibble.

You can travel south from Arkansas into Missouri but you cannot operate a motor vehicle on a public road south from AR to MO.

Well, you can go ESE on one road but that is more east than south so doesn't count.

[RTH10260]

Ought to be an interesting location for sovcits, travel without drivers license

[pipistrelle]

STAMPS in caves

No troglodytes here! The Stamp Fulfillment Service facility, located in Kansas City, MO, is located in a limestone cave 150 feet beneath the ground. It is the Postal Service’s only facility located underground.

The consistent, year-round temperatures and humidity levels in the caves allow the stamps to be maintained in mint-quality condition. The underground facility also keeps the inventory and employees safe from snow, flooding, winds and tornadic activity common in the Midwest.

SubTropolis The site of the Postal Service’s underground fulfillment center

Also just found out about the world's only post office in a cave, in Slovenia.

The Post Office In The Postojna Caves Named One Of The Seven Subterranean Wonders Of The World

Inspired by the original Seven Wonders of the World, the editors of Architectural Digest have come up with a list of the Seven Subterranean Wonders of the World, and one of them is Slovenia’s own Postojna Cave.

The cave’s post office in particular caught the attention of the editors. The office was built solely using materials that were small enough to be transported by the cave’s train. A small structure used by the postal service was built in 1899. Based on the available information, this makes the post office at Postojna Cave, which was placed on the list of post offices by the Universal Postal Union and the Austrian Postal Service in 1901, the oldest underground post office in the world.

The statistics on the number of postcards mailed from the post office are impressive. On Whit Monday in 1909, 12,000 visitors came to the cave and sent 37,000 postcards in three hours. During the same holiday two years later, 75,000 postcards were sent. On Assumption Day that year, 47,800 additional postcards were sent.

At first, the post office was functional only on special occasions, but from 1911 onward, it had regular hours of operation. Four postal officials worked in the office. Five tables with an awning were placed in front of the office. There, visitors could write their messages on postcards without having to worry about water dripping on them from the cave’s ceiling. During the 1911 summer season, between 6000 and 11,000 postcards were sold every day.

These days, an exhibition devoted to the 112-year history of the subterranean post office is on display in the Concert Hall. Visitors can purchase postcards and limited-edition stamps with images of the Postojna Caves. Also available is a postcard featuring a photo of the world’s first subterranean post office. The photo was published in a Vienna newspaper in 1911, according to the official website of the Postojna Cave.

[AndyinPA]

Cool!

[Suranis]

Why did Nickleback become Officially hated by the internet in 2003, driving Nickleback fans underground, to meet covertly on the light of the New Moon, never able to show their true self in internet public without being attacked and covered in shame?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments ... kelback_i/

Who knows what popularized hating Nickelback? I feel confident that I can pin it down to a Brian Posehn joke on Tough Crowd in May 2003.

After reading http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comme ... st_people/ I suddenly realized, very few people there know the primary moment that popularized hating Nickelback.

And looking online, very few other people, seem to know the answer either.

http://knowyourmeme.com/forums/general/ ... nickelback http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 225AA9ayyE http://theryancokeexperience.wordpress. ... ickelback/ http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/07/03/why ... nickelback

People have argued that it's because their lyrics are derivative, or their music is all the same or some more sophisticated argument about popular perception of their music see the cracked article and (The Village Voice)[http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/201 ... tition.php]. I submit that hating Nickelback, however, has a much more prosaic origin. An overplayed Comedy Central promo.

Comedy Central advertised the hell out of Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn which aired from 2002-2004. It was a panel comedy show featuring 4 comedians (and Colin Quinn as host) discussing topical news stories. One of their promos (I cannot find a video of the promo, unfortunately) that they played a lot (which I swear played for almost 6 months straight in every commercial break) was a clip of comedian Brian Posehn responding to a prompt about a study published on May 5, 2003 tying violent lyrics to violent behavior.

"No one talks about the studies that show that bad music makes people violent, but listening to Nickelback makes me want to kill Nickelback"

This joke was on every Tough Crowd promo and nearly all the time. After hearing this joke during every promo for a couple of weeks I began to hear everyone at my middle school begin to mock Nickelback mercilessly. Interestingly, any jokes about Creed and Hoobastank somehow seemed to have less staying power at the time. But individual jokes about Creed and Hoobastank weren't advertised as much this one for Nickelback.

The worthwhile part of that repetitive commercial was of course the punchline "listening to Nickelback makes me want to kill Nickelback." The whisper-down-the-lane aspect of the joke telling, allowed the origin to slowly disappear until even people unfamiliar with modern music knew there was something detestable about Nickelback.

The proliferation of this joke through Comedy Central's ad machine followed by people slowly forgetting the origin of it (made easier by there not yet being YouTube in May 2003) is what made the "Hate Nickelback" meme prevalent.

When I look up that quote from the show verbatim on Google, absolutely no one seems to get the quote exactly right. And some of these people even quote him Brian Posehn explicitly and still get the quote wrong.

Via comments section on AVClub:

"I do think certain kinds of music can make you violent. Like, when I listen to Nickelback, it makes me want to kill Nickelback." - Brian Posehn

Even Dustin Dye's blogpost defending Nickelback which briefly mentions that he thinks Brian Posehn was the origin doesn't get the quote quite right.

...Brian Posehn's joke: "Listening to Nickelback doesn't make me want to kill myself. Listening to Nickelback makes me want to kill Nickelback,"

I think that since Since Colin Quinn's Tough Crowd aired in the internet dark ages (B.Y. before YouTube, in the era of EBaum), the exact source of the original Nickelback joke was slowly forgotten, but everyone remembers some modification of the joke or idea.

As an example, this guy references a study of music influencing morality and then remarks

"the study finally provides proof that listening to Nickelback can make you a bad person."

TL;DR

1.) Poor human source memory has left hundreds of people without a direct memory of a Nickelback joke played on loop on Comedy Central for months in 2003.

2.) Since Colin Quinn's Tough Crowd has never officially been released, there has been little to remind us after the 2003 Comedy Central ad campaign ended.

3.) The Comedy Central audience are exactly young and male enough to disseminate uncredited jokes in great proportions. (I kid, I kid!)

4.) Nickelback continues to tour and earn money, so Nickelback hate/jokes are still relevant.

5.) In light of all of this, Nickelback still sucks. But I thought y'all would like some background.

Disclaimer - I've seen Nickleback live when they were supporting Bon Jovi, and thought they were pretty good.

[keith]

I think that theory has legs. I dont hate Nickleback but I dont like them to the point that I dont remember any of their music. I was surprised when the hate theme filtered thru to my conscienceness.

But I do know that to this day there is a singer that I habve never heard simply because of her over the top ads disguised as fan enthusiasm "best album in history" over and over and over in places it had no reason to be. I was gonna say i couldn't remember her name, but as I started typing I remembered it - Billie Ellish.

[bill_g]

Billie Eilish (for those unfamiliar) - qwerky, uncoordinated, and breathless, but she has something to say.

[Suranis]

Where did the term "Gerrymander" come from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

Etymology

The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander; a portmanteau of the name Gerry and the animal salamander) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette on 26 March 1812 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. This word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts Senate election districts under Governor Elbridge Gerry, later Vice President of the United States. Gerry, who personally disapproved of the practice, signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts for the benefit of the Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble a mythological salamander.[8] Appearing with the term, and helping spread and sustain its popularity, was a political cartoon depicting a strange animal with claws, wings and a dragon-like head that supposedly resembled the oddly shaped district.

The cartoon was most likely drawn by Elkanah Tisdale, an early-19th-century painter, designer, and engraver who lived in Boston at the time. Tisdale had the engraving skills to cut the woodblocks to print the original cartoon. These woodblocks survive and are preserved in the Library of Congress. The creator of the term gerrymander, however, may never be definitively established. Historians widely believe that the Federalist newspaper editors Nathan Hale and Benjamin and John Russell coined the term, but there is no definitive evidence as to who created or uttered the word for the first time.

The redistricting was a notable success for Gerry's Democratic-Republican Party. In the 1812 election, both the Massachusetts House and governorship were comfortably won by Federalists, losing Gerry his job, but the redistricted state senate remained firmly in Democratic-Republican hands.

The word gerrymander was reprinted numerous times in Federalist newspapers in Massachusetts, New England, and nationwide for the rest of 1812. This suggests an organized activity by the Federalists to disparage Gerry in particular and the growing Democratic-Republican party in general. Gerrymandering soon began to be used to describe cases of district shape manipulation for partisan gain in other states. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word's acceptance was marked by its publication in a dictionary (1848) and in an encyclopedia (1868). Since the eponymous Gerry is pronounced with a hard g /ɡ/ as in get, the word gerrymander was originally pronounced /ˈɡɛrimændər/, but pronunciation as /ˈdʒɛrimændər/, with a soft g /dʒ/ as in gentle, has become dominant. Residents of Marblehead, Massachusetts, Gerry's hometown, continue to use the original pronunciation.

From time to time, other names have been suffixed with -‍mander to tie a particular effort to a particular politician or group. Examples are the 1852 "Henry-mandering", "Jerrymander" (referring to California Governor Jerry Brown),[16] "Perrymander" (a reference to Texas Governor Rick Perry), "Tullymander" (after the Irish politician James Tully),[19] and "Bjelkemander" (referencing Australian politician Joh Bjelke-Petersen).

The_Gerry-Mander_Edit.png (188.82 KiB) Viewed 436 times

Printed in March 1812, this political cartoon was made in reaction to the newly drawn state senate election district of South Essex created by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the Democratic-Republican Party. The caricature satirizes the bizarre shape of the district as a dragon-like "monster", and Federalist newspaper editors and others at the time likened it to a salamander.

[RTH10260]

H/T @ The Mouse person!