h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I suppose this fits here -

http://xkcd.com/1331/

Useless but interesting and even entertaining (in a 'watching the laundry going round' kind of way).

Mr. X.

Two points. 1) This is a forum for useless facts, so there's that.
2.) Yeah, I can see how this would be rather unsurprising to many. Maybe it's just a bit more so to some, especially I suppose to USAians considering our pitiful history education and even more so for younger generations that have had their educations shaped by conservative forces that promote a very specific view of American History that minimizes Spanish and Latin cultural influences.

Yeah, I think they are afraid that all those families that lost their estates are going to want to be compensated by reparations and that it will come out of taxpayers pockets. See the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago.

Well in High School perhaps. I went to college for it though.

But whatever, just ignore me, go about your business.

Dashing by just to ignore Mr X as requested.

Been trying to follow the X-instructions regarding
'ignorance' but I cannot contain the questionably
useless fact that the horses the western plains injuns
used against wagon trains and blue-trousered soldiers
with the long-knives in the 19th century were a legacy
from the Spanish of the 18th & 17th centuries. A very
precious few still roam free and wild in the west.
Lesson: Never leave your war materials laying about.

~jwf~

On a related note, the last sighting of a feral camel in the American Southwest was spotted in 1941 near Douglas, Texas. These feral camels were a legacy of the short-lived Army "Camel Corps" experiment preceding the American Civil War. As many as 70 camels were imported into Texas and while they proved well adapted to the region, they tended to spook horses and mules.

You call that fact useless? Just watch me work it into a history text somewhere.

There's was even a movie that featured this military experiment.
And another where it had to be explained when a roaming camel
was encountered. One was a comedy, with either Don Knots or a
drunk Dean Martin...
Neither film left deep impressions on me other than the basically
useless fact that it happened - and the sad fact that, released
into the wild, the camels subsequently failed to thrive - unlike
the Spanish horses - fine Arabian desert breeds.

~jwf~

Heh, I learned of the Texas Camel Corps from a 1976 film, HAWMPS! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074614/ featuring both Slim Pickens and Jack Elam.

Oh yeah, Denver Pyle not Don Knots as the Colonel.

~jwf~

I just added it to my Netflix list. I'm really looking forward to seeing it again.

"the sad fact that, released
into the wild, the camels subsequently failed to thrive - unlike
the Spanish horses - fine Arabian desert breeds."

Well now, to be fair, there were much fewer camels to start with. Their odds of success were automatically way lower than the thousands and thousands of horses.

*wonders if >>much fewer<< is proper English*

I wasn't sure myself. Ultimately however, I think there's far too much worry and nitpicking over whether something is linguistically "law abiding." Languages are very adaptable, for good reason, and all this mussing and fussing about trying to enforce rules on something that's inherently going to break them whenever it wants is a needless exercise at best, and an actively detrimental one at worst.

Mr. X, you should read Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. Somewhere in there he says that a lot of the 'rules' were set down with no basis other than that the author of the book believed that they were right. Things like not splitting infinitives have a link to languages like Latin and French, but an insistence on 'similar to, different from' has no foundation. Bryson also has a lot to say about 'correct' English from many other points of view, too.

So if you want to say 'much fewer', go right ahead. You'll get no argument from me, whether it's 'right' or not.

"Somewhere in there he says that a lot of the 'rules' were set down with no basis other than that the author of the book believed that they were right."

Exactly! That's the problem. It's just that sort of English up with which I will not put.

Speaking of split infitives, the only reason Latin doesn't do it is because it literally *cannot* structure its verbs that way. English, however, can. So why the hell not?

(And why the slavish devotion to Latin anyway? The Romans all DIED! No one speaks Latin anymore.)



Thanks for the book recommendation. I haven't read that one, but I have read a good one called "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English" by one John McWhorter. Everybody should read it.