Random Knowledge

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An explanation for Earth's bimodal topography is found in the theory of Isostasy. Which put simply, is a term for how the earths lithosphere "floats" over the asthenospheric level. The oceanic lithosphere is formed of basalt and the continental lithosphere is primarily granite. As basalt is denser than granite, it "floats" lower. Combined with the fact that the continental lithosphere is thicker, and it creates land masses and a basin for oceans to form in.

 

The uncanny similiaraties between the 1898 novel/short story "Futility" & the Titanic tragedy.
a brief synopsis: it tells the story of the ocean liner the Titan that sinks in the north atlantic after hitting an iceberg.
Just like the titanic did almost 15 years later.
It is really, really strange.

 

babies born 10 weeks before their due date are almost see through and take slightly longer to develop phsically than other children of the same age. However, they have generally caught up by the age of 2

 

Say, you guys might be able to help me. Some time back some one posted about a form of math that is very advanced. I looked it up at the time but lost the link when my old PC got sick.

It was described as 'takes 10 years to learn and a lifetime to master.' I t creates a world of his own. Wish I could describe it better but I only spent a few hours with it

It is very complicated with lots of formulas and if and mayby. Any ideas of what I'm talking about?

 

@Nakia

No idea, you would need to give more details about the math for us to identify it.

Did you know, that in the UK, chocolate biscuits and cakes are taxed
differently. Historically, some consumables were considered so
important that you souldn't have to pay tax on them (ie: zero rated).
Biscuits and cakes are considered a necessity by UK law and are zero
rated. Chocolate covered biscuits however are a luxury and subject to
VAT at 17.5%. McVities, producers of the Jaffa cake, actually
went to tribunal to argue that the jaffa cake was indeed a cake and
not a chocolate biscuit, a case they apparently won by producing an
oversized jaffa cake, to convince all in attendance of its cake-ness.

 

One of the many possible theories....

Nope. He went to Cuba, the Bahamas, Central America, but he never landed on North America.

 

In sign language, it's more about body language and facial expressions than about making the actual signs

 

I went to a movie once while they had somebody doing signs for a deaf section (why not captions if it was a deaf session?). And I admit, I was amused by all the facial expressions made by the... signer?

My contribution... um... OK...

African slavery wasn't a result of inheritance racism in the slavers. It was a combination of economics, self pride, effectiveness that lead to the enslavement of Africans. Once the Atlantic slave trade became established, racism started to become prevalent in the sense that blacks were lower-class beings.

 

American planes take-off 8.5 Million times a year, over 40% of ALL take-offs in the world.
We also have 14,858 Airports, over 32% of the world total.
We like to fly here in the states

 

Every fifteen seconds there is another new person of the age between 15-24 in this world who gets infected with HIV.

 

First, let me say it's a brilliant idea.

Ok, well I'm an history student at university so I'll talk about history

Ab Urbe Condita is a Latin expression which means something like " Since the founding of the City " i.e. Rome, it's been the basis for the Roman Calender of the roman republic until the Julian Calender of -45 BC.

The Carolingian Empire and the later emergence of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire.

Historical background;

Many might not know it but the actual roman empire survived in the form of the Byzantine Empire, or the Greek empire far into the medieaval period. It was actually the easter part of the roman empire, it was Diocletian, in the 3rd century AD, that decided to split the roman state into two. Since the romans were plunged into many crisis, Diocletian felt it would be best to split administratively the state. It Survived until the Ottoman conquest of 1453. Also, they never called themselves "Byzantine" but rather roman, they felt their state was the logical and legitimate heir of the roman empire.

Pepin the short, the first king of the Carolingian dynasty in the Frank Kingdom, was giving legitimate royal power by the roman pope Zachary who was harassed by the Germanic Lombard who controlled Italy. He felt that Pepin could protect him, since the Byzantine refused to do so. By then the city Ravenna was actually under Byzantine rule, after a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to re-unite the east and the west by Byzance. In 756 Pepin and his army thus came to aid the Bishop of Rome, defeated the Lombard and did a most unusual thing. He actually gave the territory of Rome and Ravenna to Pope Zachary. These lands would become known afterward as the papal states. Many felt this to be scandalous, most European kings were content with him having spiritual leadership over Christianity. However the pope had temporal power now, in effect he was not unlike other kings and prince, he could levy taxes and most importantly an army. Many felt it was going too far. Especially the Byzantine of felt cheated, since Ravenna belonged to them. Needless to say it caused quite a ruckus.

Then, Pope Zachary “somehow” found an old document, the Constantine Donation , this document was supposed to be Emperor Constantine's lost will. It stated that when Sylvester Bishop of Rome converted the emperor to Christianity he was so pleased that he wrote a will stating that the roman empire should go to the bishop of Rome . Today we know it's a fake, since the document was written on parchment not on papyrus (as was done in the time of Constantine) and the Latin used wasn't classical but rather early medieaval (I.e. the kind of Latin used by Pope Zachary's time).

Again it cause a shock in the Christiandom, the western roman empire had fell centuries before it, and remember the Byzantine still thought they and themselves alone were the “roman empire”. Of course he never tried to actually implement the will, rather he used it as a leverage to keep Rome and Ravenna under ecclesiastic rule. At that time no one could prove the document was a fraud despite many felt it was.

After Pepin, his son assumed the royal duties, his name was Charlemagne. He then began war of conquest after war and by around 800 he controlled the Frank kingdom (Neustria, Austrasia, Aquitaine, Burgundy) part of northern Spain (who was still under Muslim rule), Saxe, Bavaria and the Frisian land. He basically rule modern France and most of Germany.

Yet again the Lombard were at Rome's doorstep, continuing his father's role as guardian of the papal states, Charlemagne took the arm to protect him. Rome was also under a civil strife as many weren't happy by the election of the new pope and wanted him replaced by any mean necessary even kill him. Charlemagne defeated the Lombard and the insurgent quite easily, however unlike his father he did annexed Italy (except the papal states of course), Content of this Charlemagne stayed in Rome to celebrate Christmas with the Pope. On the 25th December of the year 800, Pope Leon III using Constantine's Donation crowed Charlemagne emperor of the Roman! Again quite a scandal,

The Carolingian annals and historian of the time said Charlemagne wasn't aware of this and never wanted to be crowed, but other sources say otherwise and historian can't agree on this. But it's not really important what's important is the fact that he was now an emperor.

Of course, the Byzantine were furious, how could the lowly Bishop of Rome dared giving imperial authority when, in their eyes, they alone had that prerogative. Leon III argued that at the time of Charlemagne's crowning, they weren't en emperor in Constantinople (the Byzantines capital). In fact their was an Empress, Irene, in power. I know this sounds strange and sexist to our modern view but try to remember it was in 800 AD. This cause many problem and when diplomacy failed The Carolingian and the Byzantines went to war, to no one's benefit actually. The war ended some ten years after without any tangible results. The “roman” authority was back in the west.

This was the basis for the later Holy Roman Germanic Empire, the “reunion” of the many German states during the middle ages and the modern age.

So, what's the consequences of this?

1)It was now, the pope who made emperor, in fact this meant that he alone could select who would get this power.
2)Because of the papal states the pope gain immense power over international affair, a power that would last well in the modern period.
3)The riff between the east and the west was even greater. It resulted in the great Christian schism I.e. the catholic west and the orthodox east.

I hope this makes sense, and this is just a condensed history of these events. And if I made historical mistakes I appologise, but I doubt it, since well I had my class on these event yesterday

 

If you don't know how old an egg is, put it into a glass of water.
The air bubble in an egg increases with age.
The older the egg is the higher it will sit in the water or even swim up.

 

It is a myth that Norse-land (Vikings) helmets had horns.

See This Article

I have done a great deal of research on the Norselanders and all the articles agree; no horns.

However it is a fact that there is no such thing as a viking woman. Women did not go a'viking at least not to raid or trade. They did join with their men folk in settling as in Iceland. No native population so therefore no native woman.

 

Did you know that Americans pass High School History by answering a multiple choice quiz/exam at the end of the year, yet in Victoria-Australia you must complete 4-5 essays during the year on several different historical topics and must sit an hour and a half exam at the end of the year, which involves extended response questions and another essay?


...Well you do now. I'm having problems in history at the moment if you didn't pick up on it

 

Did anyone notice that it also happened in 20 year intervals? The pattern appears to have been broken.

 

HSDPA, or 3GSM (or 3G) is actually based on the CDMA air interface. Attemps to develop a 3G tech using time slots (the principle of time division - key asset in a TDMA network - in short, during a time-division based phone call, each user in the 10MHz channel (versus 30 for analog) takes turns at broadcasting on the channel. The delay is represented in milliseconds, so the phone call is seamless.

But back to the principle of time division - initial attemps to develop a 3G tech using time division proved to be an abysmal failure. Then, focus was turned on developping a 3G tech using spread spectrum (aka CDMA) interface. This attemps produces HSPA as we know it.

But, do not discount time division. China has developped their own 3G which uses both time division AND spread spectrum, gaining the best of both air interfaces.

Bottom line - 3GSM = CDMA.

 

Those numbers could be explained in several ways:
1: The US is a big country with large areas of nothing inbetween the good spots.
2: We don't like riding the train
3: Most European countries can fit inside one of the US's larger states, so they don't need a lot of airports when just as easy to take a train (and probably a lot faster when you factor in all the waiting time you encounter at airports...)

Anyhoo....

The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night

If you have 3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

When flying from London to New York on the Concord, you arrive 2 hours before you left.

 

@ Nakia: would that be topology? It was something my old Quantum Mechanics professor used to go on about, but I never understood...

MathWorld has more detailed information.

 

Yay for Time Zones. ^_^