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

marking

In some rural areas of Thailand it is not uncommon for overweight people to be slapped around the back of the head with a bamboo cane by other locals when they are walking down the street and positive way of encouraging the victim to lose weight.

antarctica is the driest continent on earth. essentially zero precipitation. no rivers or lakes.

For now.

Back to watches...

A watch or clock running backwards would be "correct" four times each day.

My dog's got no nose.









He doesn't like talking about it.

The Italian flag was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte. It was based on the French flag, but with the blue section replaced by green because green was apparently Napoleon's favourite colour.

First a few words(useful or not is not relevant) about the word 'data'. The word was actually an acronmy, when it was first use by the people working on electronic information technology. It represented the use of digital coding to store bits of information. Since, the first computers had no real memory to store information in, the information was 'written' on d.a.t.a(forgot what real name for the device) banks. This were acutal physical devices where the ones and zeros could be stored and then used to read the results of the computations. Since the term data was similar with the latin word datatum, the people working with the large volumes of results started to use 'data' to refer to digitally stored information. Now 'data' is use as a shorten form of saying 'the collection of information' and/or 'the results from the processing of the information collected.' It does not sound like a fact and searching the internet will not verify this information. You will need to read reference books, from early '70s and before, to verify this.

And now a regularly schedule rant

All the postings regarding statistics, which stated that a certain percentage of statistics are made up, stated a different percentage to have been made up. So how is it that people know this as a fact when there does not seem to be any accord on what the actual percentage of statistics are made up? It would seem that there really are no real percentage of statistics that are made up and all statistics can be confirmed as correct, since the data collectors for any specific statistics could just report that data that makes the statistic correct.


I was also going to go on about all the useful facts and non-facts posted on here as well, however, I have come to realize that the mere fact that the information was posted here renders the information useless. As for the requirement that the information be interesting, well any useless information cannot be interesting. An interesting bit of information is by its nature useful, since someone can be entertained with interesting information. Useless information also cannot be totally boring, as then someone could use it to bore somebody to death. Useless information should just be useless and information. There nobody can get more useless than that, but I will not.

Now back to your useless information conversation.

Actually, there's no such word as 'datatum'. 'Data' is the plural of the Latin word 'datum'. The Latin word means 'given' and a 'datum' is a given fact. Hence 'data' is any collection of facts or information. So unless you can come up with the name of a work (book, journal, magazine article) that actually refers to 'd.a.t.a. banks', I'll have to regard this 'fact' as spurious.

acronyms are often created to resemble an existing word.

when dr virginia apgar created the apgar test for newborn babies (Activity, Pulse, Grimace, Appearance, and Respiration) the acronym quite conveniently spelt her surname.

And then there are bacronyms where the word is already used as a name for something and somebody creates the acronym later.

Its quite fortunate that she wasnt testing newborns for Strength, Hearing, Intelligence and Temerity then.

In Uganda it is socially unaceptable to say the word 'duck'

They found an iceberg the size of belgium

Who did? Ducks?

I am ugandan and I found that last post offensive.

Duck off!

No. If I take the duck off, I'll be naked.

*wacca wacca*

'In Uganda it is socially unaceptable to say the word 'duck''

Some people just don't like fowl language.

... I am almost embarrassed to admit I'm actually laughing at that. <laugh.