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| USELESS TRIVIA |
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| The trivia game is at the bottom of the page. Qualify for player of the week and win $$$. Sing up and play a ton more games at uproar.com All of the trivia items on this page are from Mailbits.com (c) MailBits.com Used with permission Why is someone who feels like fighting said to have "a chip on their shoulder"? This saying dates back to the early 1800's, when American bars had sawdust floors. A man who felt like picking a fight would pick up a wood chip from the floor and place it on his shoulder, challenging anybody to knock it off. Such challenges were rarely refused, and typically ended when the chip and one of the fighters ended up on the floor. Bars in England and Ireland had a similar custom. Drinkers looking to brawl would "trail a coat", dangling it behind them as a challenge. The hope was that somebody would step on the coat, giving cause for a fight. These days, the fight would more likely be over who is going to pay the dry cleaning bill for the coat.  Why do we clap our hands to show approval? There will be no round of applause for the researchers who are working on this question--after hundreds of years of clapping, they still can't agree. What is known is that the practice goes as far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans, who usually threw in some snapping, cheering and toga waving for good measure. The science folks figure that clapping satisfies at least one of several possible psychological needs. The need to give an opinion and the need to participate are both satisfied by applauding. The habit may have come from the early practice of clapping somebody on the back. Clapping is also seen as a possibly innate means of expressing pent-up enthusiasm or joy, since small children and chimps are both known to do it spontaneously. Unfortunately for the researchers, neither the children nor the chimps will explain why they do it. If water is heavier than air, how do clouds stay in the sky? Humans being what we are, like to believe that if we can't see something, it means it isn't happening. However, the truth is that clouds are constantly falling from the sky--it's just not as dramatic as it sounds. Fortunately, clouds don't fall at the same rate as rocks or books. At a rate of 0.3 centimeters per second, seeing cloud drops fall would be about as exciting as watching grass grow. Even if you could stand the tedium of watching the water descend, the drops are so tiny that their downfall isn't even noticeable to the human eye. Why do we close our eyes when we kiss? For a truly graphic explanation of this phenomenon, close your eyes, press your nose against a mirror, and then open your eyes again. Not such a great view, huh? Seventy percent of the body's sense receptors are clustered in the eyes, making us a very visually oriented species. If you didn't close your eyes when kissing, you'd be too easily distracted by other things--like the frightful little details of your partner's face. Why does the sun appear red at sunrise and sunset? Blazing sunsets are a staple of romantic movies and westerns, and those scenes wouldn't be nearly as dramatic if the sun looked as whitish-yellow as it did the rest of the day. But as much as Hollywood directors would like to control the solar system, artistic preference has nothing to do with this dazzling spectacle. During the day, the sun's light is directed straight down towards the earth's surface. But when the sun is on the horizon, its light passes lengthwise through the atmosphere. This means that the rays have to travel a longer distance to get to us. The bluish colored light of the sun gets scattered during the long trip, leaving more red light than any other color. Were people ever really "tarred and feathered"? It's always seemed to me that the feathered portion of this recipe was a little excessive. Once you're stripped naked and brushed with hot tar, having a few feathers stuck to you is definitely the least of your problems. Nonetheless, this cruel custom definitely did take place for about two centuries. Nobody knows how it started, but tarring and feathering became popular during the American Revolution as a way of letting supporters of the English know that their political beliefs weren't welcome. Sometimes a creative touch was added, with manure substituting for feathers, or the victim parading around at the end of a leash. No matter what accessories were used, the end result was usually blistered skin and a mess requiring scrapers and turpentine to clean up. Why does a blue ribbon signify first place? We'd have a hard time awarding a blue ribbon to whoever started this tradition, since sources point to several different possibilities. Most agree that credit goes to the English, who have used blue ribbons for several centuries to signify everything from knighthood to sobriety, but no one knows when the trend really caught on. What most experts can agree on is the astronomical basis for choosing blue as the color of honor. Blue represents the sky and the heavens, the highest possible point. Second prize is typically designated with a red ribbon, meant to symbolize the sun. Yellow depicts the stars - once thought to be lower than the sun - in third place ribbons. Many runners-up and honorable mentions receive a green ribbon, most likely to represent the grass on the ground. Then again, maybe it really has to do with the envy felt towards the blue ribbon winners. Why does drinking too much lead to a hangover? Anyone who's ever suffered from this self-induced ailment may believe that hangovers are nature's way of teaching us a lesson. In reality, there are two equally plausible explanations for the dehydration, nausea, headaches and other fun stuff greeting you the morning after a big party. The first is that the body doesn't like change. Just when your brain adjusts to operating with the alcohol in your system, you fall asleep or pass out and the alcohol starts disappearing. Your brain chemistry doesn't adjust fast enough, leaving you feeling like you've been hit by a truck. The second possibility has to do with evil chemical substances called "congeners". The same fermenting process that makes alcohol creates them, and they actually add to the taste of the booze. The downside is that they travel with the alcohol into the very cells of your body. The next day, the alcohol is gone but the toxic congeners are left behind, making your hangover a full body experience. |
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PSYCHOTIC RAMBLINGS |
SLOKKO THE BI POLAR CAT |
LINK EM DANO |
CELEBRITY PUNCHOUT |
WEEKLY MIND PICKER |
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