Elephants are the only mammal that can't jump.
Yeah, sloths do it all the time! Or not.
Fully 67% of statistics are misleading.
Fully 67% of statistics are misleading.
Lies, damn lies!
Elephants are the only mammal that can't jump.Yeah, sloths do it all the time! Or not.
*shrug* Jump, fall, whatever works.
The noun troll comes from the Old Norse word for a mythological monster. The word evokes the trolls of Scandinavian folklore and children's tales, where they are often creatures bent on mischief and wickedness.
And stopping the construction of churches. One of them was caught in the act.
Lions hate hyenas so much they will actually hunt and kill them, leaving their carcasses for the vultures.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
When they stormed the Bastille, the only prisoners they found were 4 forgers, 2 lunatics and an associate of the Marquis de Sade.
When these liberated prisoners were paraded through Paris, one of them became a focal point because he walked with such pride and dignity. This was one of the lunatics; he thought he was Julius Caesar and believed he was on a triumphal march.
The head of the largest producer (worth over €100 million) of buffalo mozarella have been taken into custody by the Italian police, under suspicion of being controlled by the Casalesi Camorra clan.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The head of the largest producer (worth over €100 million) of buffalo mozarella have been taken into custody by the Italian police, under suspicion of being controlled by the Casalesi Camorra clan.
It's really difficult to have good cheese without mob involvement. Something about embezzlement makes it taste just right.
-In the original draft on The Matrix, humans were used by the machines as wetware, due to the highly efficient nature of the brain. However, this was deemed too complicated and instead the plot was changed to humans being used as batteries.
-In Venezuela, you can fill a 50-litre gas tank with less than 1 USD. In fact, water is more expensive than oil.
-The Scottish attempted to stablish a colony in Panama in the late 1600's. Riddled with internal and external issues, the colony was eventually captured by the Spanish and the whole matter costed Scotland an estimate of 1/3rd of all the liquid wealth in the kingdom.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
-The Great Schism between the Catholic and the Orthodox churches effectively began when both the Pope in Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople simultaneously excommunicated each other.
-The entire Saint Peter's Square and Basilica complex in the Vatican was built to resemble a giant key. Which is interesting, since back when it was built, and for many centuries thereafter, it was impossible to notice (today we can see it on Google Earth).
-In Argentina, Welsh is considered an official language (spoken by more than 50,000 people as a primary tongue).
-Easter Island is the most isolated territory in the world (as in, it is the furthest away from any other landmass of any size).
-The Great Schism between the Catholic and the Orthodox churches effectively began when both the Pope in Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople simultaneously excommunicated each other.
I imagine that going down about like this. :
You're out of the church!
No, You're out of the church.
Nu uh, You're not part of the church anymore.
You can't do that because you're not in the club, ***PHHHHTTTTT***
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
-The Great Schism between the Catholic and the Orthodox churches effectively began when both the Pope in Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople simultaneously excommunicated each other.I imagine that going down about like this. :
You're out of the church!
No, You're out of the church.
Nu uh, You're not part of the church anymore.
You can't do that because you're not in the club, ***PHHHHTTTTT***
Actually, it was a pretty complicated issue. Basically, Pope Leo IX sent a group of legates to Constantinople to tell Ecumenical Patriarch Cerularius that he should rescind the "Ecumenical" title and accept the Petrine Primacy of Rome. When Cerularius said no, the legates excommunicated him, after which the Patriarch excommunicated the legates.
Now, the confounding issue is that when the legate excommunicated Cerularius, Leo IX had recently died, and thus the legate had lost its power to ennact an effective excommunication (since Papal Legates act as extentions of the Pontiff's authority), while that very same issue meant that Cerularius excommunication could not reach the Throne of Saint Peter itself (also, some accounts mention that the Patriarch only performed a personal excommunication, and thus would have not included the Pope either).
However, while the exact nature of who got excommunicated by whom is still a matter of debate, back in the day that event marked the split between both sides of the Universal Church, which had long been brewing due to ritual and theological differences, as well as political ones (as the Pope had become the supreme political authority in Western Europe, while the Patriarch existed under a regime of Cesaropapism beneath the Bizantine Emperor). But most importantly, the split was caused by the debate regarding Petrine Primacy: The Pope (which was one of the five patriarchs of the Universal Church, one in Rome, one in Constantinople, one in Antioch, one in Alexandria, and one in Jerusalem) claimed to be the effective head of the Church since he occupied the Throne of Saint Peter, which in turn was considered the founder of the institution and the most important bishop, while the other Patriarchs considered the Pope to be "Primus Inter Pares" (First Among Equals), accepting Saint Peter's primacy as certain, but mostly honourary. So when the Patriarch of Constantinople took the "Ecumenical" title (signaling himself as the Patriarch of Patriarchs), things broke down.
About ten centuries later we're still debating who's right. On the good side, Catholics and Orthodox have managed to conciliate most theological differences (as far as I know, there were never any foundational dogmatic disputes, unlike, say, what happened after the Reformation), but until the matter primacy is settled, I'm not sure the Great Schism will come to an end.
Still, it is a very interesting topic to read about.
*snip*
Clearly you're a history buff and on some level so am I. Personally I just don't think highly of religion and generally I assume arguements over the who has better magical powers will devolve into childish bickering.
-In Venezuela, you can fill a 50-litre gas tank with less than 1 USD. In fact, water is more expensive than oil.
Do you have a direct link for that one for the purpose of a citation? Would help me immensely on my Cultural Diversity assignment since it's on Venezuela.
Gracias.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
-In Venezuela, you can fill a 50-litre gas tank with less than 1 USD. In fact, water is more expensive than oil.
Do you have a direct link for that one for the purpose of a citation? Would help me immensely on my Cultural Diversity assignment since it's on Venezuela.
Gracias.
I actually experience it regularly; been to Venezuela 5 times this year already. Due to my line of work (I produce and export extra-virgin olive oil), I have to travel around the world once or twice per month, and Venezuela is one of the markets I'm currently working to open (should be sending the first cargo in December, if the horrible Venezuelan bureaucracy manages to get our clearances ready by November. One year to get a sanitation permit, ONE YEAR. And that's because we got lucky and knew people at the Ministry!). I was there just last week, when I noticed that a single 500ml water bottle costed me about 2 USD, while filling a 60-litre gas tank (that's about 16 US gallons) costed me about 1.8 USD. That means 1 litre of bottled water costs about 66 times more than 1 litre of gas. Considering here in Chile I pay about 70 USD to fill my car, and I usually do it once per week, in Venezuela that would last me about 9 months!
This is due to President Chavez' extreme subsidy of gas prices. While Venezuela naturally has low prices due to being a big oil producer, the State spends billions of USD each year to artificially keep the prices even lower.
As for sources you can use, here is a link to the Venezuelan Ministry of Oil where you can find the evolution of prices per barrel, which you can contrast with the 3 to 4 cents per litre price you can find detailed here (if you need help translating, I'd be happy to help).
*snip*Clearly you're a history buff and on some level so am I. Personally I just don't think highly of religion and generally I assume arguements over the who has better magical powers will devolve into childish bickering.
Hey, religious history can be tremendously interesting, even if you don't believe in any of them. If you like history, one of the best books I've read is "The Crusades" by Thomas Asbridge (the guy's agnostic, and very objective and reasonable about the whole thing). It gives an excellent insight on the nature of both Christianity and Islam, regarding a period that most people hardly understand.
|
The noun troll comes from the Old Norse word for a mythological monster. The word evokes the trolls of Scandinavian folklore and children's tales, where they are often creatures bent on mischief and wickedness.
And stopping the construction of churches. One of them was caught in the act.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
*snip*Clearly you're a history buff and on some level so am I. Personally I just don't think highly of religion and generally I assume arguements over the who has better magical powers will devolve into childish bickering.
You know this is the third such thread of this nature. It seems to be going nice so far. It is comments such as this one that killed the last two.
|
|
-The Great Schism between the Catholic and the Orthodox churches effectively began when both the Pope in Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople simultaneously excommunicated each other.I imagine that going down about like this. :
You're out of the church!
No, You're out of the church.
Nu uh, You're not part of the church anymore.
You can't do that because you're not in the club, ***PHHHHTTTTT***
Actually, it was a pretty complicated issue. Basically, Pope Leo IX sent a group of legates to Constantinople to tell Ecumenical Patriarch Cerularius that he should rescind the "Ecumenical" title and accept the Petrine Primacy of Rome. When Cerularius said no, the legates excommunicated him, after which the Patriarch excommunicated the legates.
Now, the confounding issue is that when the legate excommunicated Cerularius, Leo IX had recently died, and thus the legate had lost its power to ennact an effective excommunication (since Papal Legates act as extentions of the Pontiff's authority), while that very same issue meant that Cerularius excommunication could not reach the Throne of Saint Peter itself (also, some accounts mention that the Patriarch only performed a personal excommunication, and thus would have not included the Pope either).
However, while the exact nature of who got excommunicated by whom is still a matter of debate, back in the day that event marked the split between both sides of the Universal Church, which had long been brewing due to ritual and theological differences, as well as political ones (as the Pope had become the supreme political authority in Western Europe, while the Patriarch existed under a regime of Cesaropapism beneath the Bizantine Emperor). But most importantly, the split was caused by the debate regarding Petrine Primacy: The Pope (which was one of the five patriarchs of the Universal Church, one in Rome, one in Constantinople, one in Antioch, one in Alexandria, and one...
Imagine how much different the world would be if instead of a power grab old Leo had some humility and was happy with being the first among equals.
You know this is the third such thread of this nature. It seems to be going nice so far. It is comments such as this one that killed the last two.*snip*Clearly you're a history buff and on some level so am I. Personally I just don't think highly of religion and generally I assume arguements over the who has better magical powers will devolve into childish bickering.
I merely stated my opinion and then let it go. I'd recommend you and everyone do the same.
Imagine how much different the world would be if instead of a power grab old Leo had some humility and was happy with being the first among equals.
Indeed. For example, it is generally agreed that without the Great Schism dividing Western and Eastern Europe both religiously and politically (as religious unity back in the Middle Ages was fundamental to keeping proto-nations together, hence why monarchs were so keen on rooting out things like heresy), the Crusades would have had a much different result, likely with a permanent european presence in the Middle East (though the First Crusade had some level of support from the Byzantine emperor, Constantinople either stood distant or even profited from European misfortune in Outremer).
Even though for Islam the crusades were mostly a distant conflict that took place in a backwater region (as important as Jerusalem was to Islam, the territory was very unappealing to them, in the face of a far richer Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Persia), having all Christians work under a common cause would have drastically changed the balance of powers in the Middle East, which would have had profound repercussions in future developments, such as making it impossible for the Ottomans to rise into power in Anatolia.
Then there is the thing about how different the Catholicism would have developed if the Pentarchy (the system were the five great bishops ruled as independent bodied) had been kept. For instance, Orthodoxy today works divided on Synods, which acts as essentially independent churches (even though they do recognize different degrees of importance between Patriarchs, it is not a solid structure like in the Roman Church), and I imagine such system would have expanded along with the growth of Catholicism around the world, with things such as a Brasilian or South Korean Synod.
I'm not sure whether there would be any significant dogmatic difference, though, since besides of things such as how should one cross oneself (Catholics do it leftward, Orthodox do it rightwards) or what kind of bread should be used for the transubstantiation, most other things are shared between the churches (both Catholics and Orthodox are Nicean and Chalcedonian -Oriental Orthodox, which are Monophysites, are not the same as the Greek Orthodox, which were the ones that split along with the Roman Catholics in the Great Schism. I believe Monophysites split back in the First Chalcedonian Council, or maybe the First Council of Ephesus. Can't remember which, but in any case it was before the mutual excommunications of the 11th Century).
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
An average male has nearly 1 million erections in their lifetime.
Underachievers.
-The Great Schism between the Catholic and the Orthodox churches effectively began when both the Pope in Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople simultaneously excommunicated each other.I imagine that going down about like this. :
You're out of the church!
No, You're out of the church.
Nu uh, You're not part of the church anymore.
You can't do that because you're not in the club, ***PHHHHTTTTT***
Its amazing how much of history boils down to something we would ground 8 year olds for...
Peter Woodhorpe played Gollum and Michael Graham-Cox played Boromir in Ralph Bakshi's version of LoTR AND the 13 part episode of said story on radio.
Ian Holm played Frodo on BBC radio AND Bilbo in the Jackson film trilogy
-Even though Coca Cola uses the exact same recipe for every country, flavour does indeed change between regions, mostly because the type of sugar used is different.
-In English, the word "Bizarre" means "Strange"; in Castillian, it means "Brave". Hence why the full title of Don Quixote is "The Bizarre and Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha".
-Romanian belongs to the same language family as French, Portuguese, Castillian, and Italian.
-No one is certain where does the Basque language come from, as it has no direct connection to any other European language.
-Also, Basques have been living in the same place longer than any other European population group.
-Romans became quite the masters of human anatomy. Most of these discoveries where made by the medics attending gladiators after fights.
-While there is little depiction of it in modern media, it has been recently determined that female gladiators were quite common in ancient Rome.
-When he was 20 and still an aspiring politician, Julius Caesar was captured by eastern mediterranean pirates. It is said that he enthralled his captors with his poetry, and ultimately managed to befriend them, allegedgly saying "My friends, once I'm released, I will not kill you", to the point that he was allowed to send one of his servants travelling to the nearby greek cities to collect a ransom (20 silver talents, which was a whole lot of money). The cities gave the money, and once he was released, he rushed to those same cities, convinced them to raise a fleet of dozens of ships, and raided the pirates. He held to his promise, and instead had the sailors crucify the pirates, recover the ransom money and paid it back to the cities. This event made him very influential among the city-states of the eastern reaches of the Empire, something which would help him improve his career later on.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
-In English, the word "Bizarre" means "Strange"; in Castillian, it means "Brave". Hence why the full title of Don Quixote is "The Bizarre and Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha".
Neither definition is fully inaccurate though. =)
Bubble Wrap was originally designed to be used as wallpaper.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sadly yes. Or it starts off as such then... well people make it worse.
Its amazing how much of history boils down to something we would ground 8 year olds for...
they always do.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
-In English, the word "Bizarre" means "Strange"; in Castillian, it means "Brave". Hence why the full title of Don Quixote is "The Bizarre and Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha".Neither definition is fully inaccurate though. =)
Hehe.
Bubble Wrap was originally designed to be used as wallpaper.
Good God, I'd go mad trying not to pop every single bubble on the wall.
And then I'd pop every single one of them.
And then I'd pop every single one of them.
You and me both bruddah.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
-The name of the flying city in Jonathan Swift's famous book Gulliver's Travels, Laputa, means "The Whore" in Castillian, which has led the localized translation to use alternatives such as "Lupata". Since Swift was known to be well versed in Castillian, it is argued that the naming was completely intentional (Laputa was meant to symbolize the British oppresion of Ireland).
-In the theory that postulates the Moon as the result of the collision of a now non-existant planet with the Earth, said planet is called Thea, as Thea was the mother of Selene in Greek Mythology, and Selene is the actual name of the Moon (hence why "Moon Aliens" are called "Selenites").
-Cleopatra was not Egyptian; she was Greek, as were the 12 previous rulers before her. All were members of the Ptolomei dynasty.
-Bone forensics on Roman corpses have shown that lead poisoning was rampart among the nobility, due to the use of said material in plates and cups.
-The Chinese invented the earliest known type of mechanical clock. However, for reasons unknown, the knowledge was lost to them, until an artifact of very similar characteristics was introduced to them by Europeans.
-Alfred Nobel, the swedish inventor after which the prize is named, developed dynamite under the assumption that, upon witnessing such destructive power, the nations of the world would dessist in their pursue of war and enter an age of perpetual peace.
-Cleopatra was not Egyptian; she was Greek, as were the 12 previous rulers before her. All were members of the Ptolomey dynasty.
And she was the first of the Ptolomeys to know how to speak Egyptian. She could reportedly speak upwards of ten languages.
All vertebrates have their trunk nervous system in the dorsal position (spine down our backs) and their heart in the ventral position (heart in our chests). Invertebrates are reversed, with the nervous system on the bottom and the heart on top. All vertebrates are upside down in terms of body plan relative to the invertebrates we evolved from.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
-Cleopatra was not Egyptian; she was Greek, as were the 12 previous rulers before her. All were members of the Ptolomey dynasty.And she was the first of the Ptolomeys to know how to speak Egyptian. She could reportedly speak upwards of ten languages.
And she had never met a man like Titus Pullo before!