Put on your thinking cap when you visit CITB - here you'll find Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts and "Outside The Box" thinking, plus we call Bullsh!t for what it is. Enjoy the ride, and if we stimulate your brain, please tell others about us!
On Fridays I post something fun. Why? Because you deserve a reward. We simply call it our TGIF Post.
This is week 2 of a 3 part series called "Mind Blowing Facts."Some call it trivia - I like to think of it as assorted "Data Points." Fun facts that are "Brain Builders." This is the perfect synaptic workout before you veg out in front of the idiot box all weekend.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Remember to print this post and share it with the kids. You'll be a hero, and they will WOW and amaze their friends.
Mind Blowing Facts 51 - 100
A Dragonfly's eye contains 30,000 lenses.
A Pig's tongue contains 15,000 taste buds. In comparison, the human tongue has 9,000 taste buds. (Yet they eat garbage. What am I missing here?)
The number system was invented in India. Aryabhatta was the scientist who invented the digit zero.
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
Earth weighs 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. But, every day the earth's weight increases by 10 tons because of cosmic dust falling on it from space!
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
"A duck's quack doesn't echo anywhere." The ONLY FACT HERE is that it is NOT A FACT! It is a commonly repeated Urban Legend.
Man is the only animal who'll eat with an enemy.
The average woman uses about her height in lipstick every five years.
The first Christmas was celebrated on December 25, AD 336 in Rome, after Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity the empire's favored religion.
A Cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.
A Chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't.
A Rat can last longer without water than a Camel can.
About 10% of the world's population is left-handed.
The common belief that "Dolphins sleep with one eye open" is ONLY a metaphor. Dolphins have to be conscious to breath. This means that they cannot go into a full deep sleep, because then they would suffocate. Dolphins have "solved" that by letting one half of their brain sleep at a time. This has been determined by doing EEG studies on dolphins. Dolphins sleep about 8 hours day in this fashion.
Snakes have no external ears. Therefore, they do not hear the music of a "snake charmer." Instead, they are probably responding to the movements of the snake charmer and the flute. However, sound waves may travel through bones in their heads to the middle ear.
Many spiders have eight eyes.
The tongue of snakes has no taste buds. Instead, the tongue is used to bring smells and tastes into the mouth. Smells and tastes are then detected in two pits, called "Jacobson's organs", on the roof of their mouths. Receptors in the pits then transmit smell and taste information to the brain.
Birds don't sweat. Birds pant to expel body heat – they breath very quickly, letting the cooler air passing through the lungs and air sacs carry heat away from the body.
The highest kangaroo leap recorded is 10 ft and the longest is 42 ft.
Flamingo tongues were commonly eaten at Roman feasts.
The smallest bird in the world is the Hummingbird. It weighs 1 oz.
The bird that can fly the fastest is called a White. It can fly up to 95 miles per hour.
The oldest living things on Earth are 12,000 years old. They are the flowering shrubs called creosote bushes in the Mojave Desert.
Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor, when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water.
A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water. If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, you will feel thirsty. If it's reduced by 10%, you will die.
Along with its lengthy neck, the giraffe has a very long tongue. It is over 20 inches long. Surprise! A giraffe can clean its ears with its tongue.
Ostriches kick with tremendous force, but only forward. Don't mess with them (unless your behind them).
An elephant can smell water three miles away.
If you were to remove your skin, it would weigh as much as 5 pounds.
A Hippopotamus can run faster than a man.
India never invaded any country in the last 10,000 years.
The tallest man in modern history was Robert Pershing Wadlow standing a whopping 8' 11". In comparison the average giraffe about about 18 ft.
Yao Defen is believed to be the world's tallest woman. She measures 7 ft. 9 in. That is 2 inches more than Sandy Allen (7 ft. 7 in.) of the United States. Allen is currently listed by Guinness World Records as the world's tallest woman.
The only 2 animals that can see behind themselves without turning their heads are the rabbit and the parrot.
The blue whale is the largest animal on earth. The heart of a blue whale is as big as a car, and its tongue is as long as an elephant.
The largest bird egg in the world today is that of the ostrich. Ostrich eggs are from 6 to 8 inches long. Because of their size and the thickness of their shells, they take 40 minutes to hard-boil. The average adult male ostrich, the world's largest living bird, weighs up to 345 pounds.
Every dolphin has its own signature whistle to distinguish it from other dolphins, much like a human fingerprint.
The world's largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.
90% of all the ice in the world is located on the continent of Antarctica.
Antarctica is DRIEST continent. Antarctica is a desert.
Antarctica is COLDEST continent, averaging minus 76 degrees in the winter.
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. It doesn't have a moon. Its atmosphere is so thin that during the day the temperature reaches +750 degrees, and at night can plunge to -300 degrees.
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. It is so large that if it were hollow, you could fit 1,000 Earths inside! Jupiter is made up of gas and is not solid. The most famous feature of Jupiter is its Red Spot, which is actually an enormous hurricane that has been raging on Jupiter for hundreds of years! Currently 27 of Jupiter's moons are officially recognized.
Saturn is a very windy place! Winds can reach up to 1,100 miles per hour. Saturn is also made of gas. This planet is famous for its beautiful rings, and at last count has at least 60 moons.
Uranus is the third largest planet, and is also made of gas. It's tilted on its side and spins north-south rather than east-west. Uranus has 27 named moons. 5 of them are massive enough to be considered dwarf planets if they were in orbit about the Sun.
Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun, the fourth largest, and appears blue because it is made of methane gas. It is named after the Roman god of the sea. Neptune is four times the size of Earth, and its day lasts a little more than 16 hours. Its year is about 165 Earth years. Neptune's orbit is a perfect circle.
Until recently Pluto was considered to be the farthest planet from the Sun. It has such an unusual orbit that occasionally it passes closer to the Sun than Neptune. Pluto is made of rock and ice. It is so small that astronomers are debating whether it should even be considered a planet. Recently other planet like objects have been discovered orbiting the Sun even further out in space than Pluto.
Mars has seasons like Earth. Mars has polar caps like Earth, containing frozen carbon dioxide (and small amount of water). The Sun appears about half the size on Mars as it does from Earth. The largest volcano in the Solar System is on Mars. It is called Olympus Mons. Mars is believed to have had water flowing around it like Earth once. It may have had a blue sky, too. However, it is unlikely that it had grass, trees and plants like Earth has now.
Mars is the one planet that people believe is most likely to contain or to have contained life. Around 1900, The Guzman Prize was offered to the first person to be in contact with an extra-terrestrial being. However, this extra-terrestrial being was not allowed to come from Mars because that would make the competition too easy!
EDITOR'S NOTE: Please read the CITB story "What in the HELL Mars is this?" for revealing and fascinating photos of possible life on Mars.
Posted by Thom Byxbe | Under Concept, Idea
Tuesday Mar 11, 2008
In the course of writing CITB we read and research a LOT of web sites. While surfing the web today I saw a link to VistaRewired.com. I no longer am a Microsoft Windows user having made the move to Linux several months ago. But, in my humble opinion, no Microsoft operating system is more bloated and convoluted than Vista. When I visited Vista Rewired I knew I had found a site that was a gold mine of simple, easy to use, solutions to the mysteries of Windows Vista.
Vista Rewired was created by two aspiring young entrepreneurs with the intent of solving the headaches of Windows Vista users, and to educate them on the operating system. The easy to use tips and tricks will help Vista users so they can use the operating system to its full potential.
Here is a LIMITED selection of links to Vista Rewired articles that I felt many users would find helpful.
The complete index of articles on the site can be found HERE. Remember that this site is adding important information and growing daily. Be sure to bookmark it or subscribe to their RSS feed to stay updated on this VALUABLE resource to Windows Vista.
We give this site our HIGHEST recommendation. We think it such a valuable resource that we have added it to our permanent list of Important Blogs on CITB's sidebar.
CITB Quote of the day: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work!"- Thomas Edison
The rich, powerful and mesmerizing voice of rising star Paul Potts has touched the hearts of millions since his win on the hot new UK talent show, "Britain's Got Talent," last year. Watched by 13.5 million in the finals, his hauntingly beautiful rendition of Puccini's Nessun Dorma stunned the show's judges and audiences alike, leaving many moved to tears.
Like the audience of this video, I found his performance moving. His posture on stage makes it clear that he had mastered his craft. But the real truth in this video is how small-minded the three judges are. Even when they are surprised by his performance, they act as if they somehow deserve to sit in judgment of him. They don't! Critics rarely do...
In a interview that was broadcast before his performance in the semifinal, Potts said that he had been bullied in school, and that experience may have had an influence on his lack of self-confidence. He made a similar remark in 1999 — that his voice had always been a source of solace in the past when bullied.
He performed a full-length "Nessun Dorma" for his finale on June 17, 2007 as well as an encore after he won the competition. Potts defeated co-favorite, Connie Talbot and received the highest public vote out of two million votes cast to win "Britain's Got Talent," winning the right to perform at the Royal Variety Performance on December 3, 2007, in front of Her Majesty, The Queen.
In December 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented Potts with a discography plaque for having sold 2,000,000 copies of his album "One Chance" and for showing that "Britain really does have huge amounts of talent."
Potts was on a six-month sabbatical as manager at Carphone Warehouse in Bridgend, a mobile phone store some eight miles from his hometown. On March 5, 2008, he resigned from his management position via email.
So when the great male opera singers are listed in the history books i think it shall read "Placido, Pavarotti, Carerras and um.. Paul Potts!"
CITB Quote of the day: "Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome." - Arthur Ashe
"The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, ...to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience" - Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
To see the potential in this story requires one to do some “Outside The Box” thinking. This is something that I feel it is our duty at CITB to encourage.
I believe one of the BEST ways for CITB encourage “Outside The Box” thinking is to provide EXCELLENT examples. That is the purpose of this new series. We will focus on current living and tested innovative thinkers. NOT conceptual thinkers, but individuals who have demonstrated practical functional, “Outside The Box” thinking.
The other day I re-discovered Seth Godin. Seth has been around the Internet for a LONG time. Why is he the subject of our inaugural post in the "Thinkers You NEED To Know" series? Here are SOME of his accomplishments:
Founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the interactive direct marketing company acquired by Yahoo! in 1998
Founded the "Recommendation Network" website Squidoo
Daily he helps adjust the way people think about change, marketing and work processes. He is highly respected for his intricate understanding of the Internet. Seth has lead in helping to define not only the Internet's processes, but a large chunk of its marketing vocabulary. Here is an example of how he coined the term "permission marketing", and defined a basic concept of the Internet today.
Advertisements on TV and Radio are classified as "interruption marketing", which interrupt the customer while he is doing something of his preference. Godin introduced the concept of "permission marketing", where the business provides something of value to the customer and obtains his permission, and then does marketing.
Godin combines three elements in his writings.
The end of the "TV-Industrial complex" means that marketers no longer have the power to command the attention of anyone they choose, whenever they choose.
In a marketplace in which consumers have more power, marketers must show more respect; this means no spam, no deceit and a bias for keeping promises.
He asserts that the only way to spread the word about an idea is for that idea to earn the buzz by being remarkable.
Godin refers to those who spread these ideas as "Sneezers", and to the ideas being spread as "IdeaViruses." He calls a remarkable product or service a purple cow. Yahoo! currently has a model of a purple cow in the lobby of its Sunnyvale campus.
SETH'S PHILOSOPHY in his own words...
For fifty years, advertising drove our economy. Then media exploded. We went from three channels to five hundred, from no web pages to a billion. Suddenly there are more than 100 brands of nationally advertised water. There are dozens of car companies, selling thousands of combinations. Starbucks offers 19,000,000 different ways to order a beverage, and Oreo cookies now come in more than nineteen flavors.
In the face of all this choice and clutter, consumers realized that they have quite a bit of power. So advertising stopped working.
One insight is that marketing with permission works better than spam. In other words, delivering anticipated, personal and relevant ads to the people who want to get them is always more effective than yelling loudly at strangers. PERMISSION MARKETING addresses this issue.
Once an idea is in the hands of people who care about its success, it may be lucky enough to benefit from digitally augmented word of mouth. I call this an ideavirus. Modern ideas spread online and off, and this is faster and more effective than the old-fashioned centralized way of selling. "UNLEASHING THE IDEAVIRUS" is the most successful ebook of all time and you can buy the paperback for about $10.
It's remarkable products that get remarked on. That seems obvious, but it flies in the face of the way most goods and services and business items are created and marketed. Boring is invisible.
The thing that makes something remarkable isn't usually directly related to the original purpose of the product or service. It's the FREE PRIZE INSIDE, the extra stuff, the stylish bonus, the design or the remarkable service or pricing that makes people talk about it and spread the word.
Seth's controversial book, ALL MARKETERS ARE LIARS, isn't about lying at all. It's about telling stories that people want to believe. It's about the fact that people want bottled water, not tap; iPod Nanos, not Rios; and politicians who talk straight, regardless of the consequences... But most of all, it's about authenticity.
I believe that it's possible to enjoy your job, to do the right thing, to be transparent, to give more than you get and to be successful, all at the same time. In fact, that's sort of the definition of success, isn't it?
TOP 7 "SETH'S BLOG" POSTS OF ALL TIME
Small is the new big - How the net turns the advantage of the mighty upside down.
Posted by Thom Byxbe | Under Thought
Wednesday Feb 27, 2008
The Mayans created the most sophisticated calendar system of all the known civilizations. Their knowledge of the celestial cycles thousands of years ago rivals our collective knowledge today. The Calendar has never erred. On December 21, 2012, our solar system will enter into its Galactic Day for the first time in Humanity's history. The Calendar has prophesied that as we move out of the darkness, great calamities will come with it. They warned us...
Never before in history has one date, one moment in time, been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, so many scientists, so many governments and to so many people all around the world.
The ancient Maya believed the Earth's final day will be December 21, 2012. Native Americans, Egyptians, Chinese and others arrived at a similar conclusion, each without a knowledge of the other. The Maya claimed that this future end-time would include a solar shift, a Venus transit and mounting earthquakes.
2012 is sometimes claimed to be a great year of spiritual transformation (or apocalypse). Many sources interpret the completion of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21 by the most widely held correlation) to mean there will be a major change in world order.
Polar Shift
Polar Shift is a theory that on December 21st 2012 Earth will experience earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or other natural disasters. In 2012 the next polar reversal will take place on earth. This means that the North Pole will be changed into the South Pole. Scientifically this can only be explained by the fact that the earth will start rotating in the opposite direction, together with a huge disaster of unknown proportions.
Magnetic Somersaults
In the first quarter of 2001, the Sun switched magnetic poles. This occurs every eleven years. Prior to this the Sun's north magnetic pole was at the north rotational pole. Now the Sun's north magnetic pole is at its south pole. Since opposite poles attract, the magnetic poles of the Earth and Sun are now at their most stable.
Just about the time of 2012 Winter Solstice, the Sun's poles will switch back. During this switch there will be a tendency for the Sun's magnetic field to pull the Earth's field with it.
If the Earth's magnetic poles switch, this would put stress on the planet aggravating earthquakes and volcanos, not to mention destruction of the electrical power distribution grid. And, if the switch happens fast enough don't ever expect your computer to work again. But if you have old tube type equipment, keep it. It should survive just fine. It will work if you can find electricity.
December 21 2012 THE END
A recent Google search of the date "December 21 2012" produced 147,000 results. There are entire websites dedicated to this moment in time. There are blogs, discussion boards, chat rooms and scientific studies.
I have read stories the last few months about underground cities and government actions that make sense if we are preparing for an ELE (Extinction Level Event). Take a look at the underground complex at Yamantau that the Russians are building. Could this be a haven for surviving a solar blast? And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is investing along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, in what is called the "doomsday seed bank". Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.
We offer this story as food for thought. There will be much more excitement and controversy as December 21, 2012 draws closer. We plan to explore anything that offers credibility to the many theory's surrounding this topic. Please give us your feedback and opinions.
TWB
CITB Quote of the day: "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." - Albert Einstein
Posted by Thom Byxbe | Under Concept, Idea
Wednesday Feb 20, 2008
I have been involved with the World Wide Web since its conception. The creators of the WWW concept envisioned a tool for the sharing of knowledge through the linking of data points. HyperHistory Online is precisely what they envisioned. HyperHistory.com is an expanding scientific project presenting 3,000 years of world history with an interactive combination of synchronoptic lifelines, timelines, and maps.
A novel synchronoptic concept depicts a full panorama of history in such a way that it will appeal to a cultivated public at large. A true picture of the world would be incomplete if it equates history with the history of wars and politics and neglects all other aspects of life. The addition of scientific, cultural and religious facts and events are therefore a key to a fundamental knowledge of society. A spatial representation of time has obvious educational advantages: here history is no longer learned but viewed.
EDITORS NOTE: Albert Einstein said "never memorize anything you can look up in a book". I subscribe to this concept as it appears so do the authors of HyperHistory Online.
Over 2,000 files are interconnected throughout the site. In addition to that HyperHistory provides several hundred links to the world wide web. The growing site itself contains presently over 50 MB of images and text files, but individual gif files are kept small enough to allow for a quick display.
I love to learn and this is a site for student, teacher and information junkies like myself. We give HyperHistory Online our BEST recommendation. While the interface to this site is good it seems to us that at times it is confusing. Do not let this bit of constructive criticism prevent you from visiting this site. It will be one you will often return to.
CITB Quote of the day: "Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein
We use Backpack here at CITB everyday. After trying a LOT of software solutions to manage the multitude of tasks necessary to plan, schedule, and coordinate the day to day operations of our 3 blogs we chose Backpack.
Please click below and take advantage of the FREE version of Backpack.
Thomas Byxbe is the Publisher and Editor of Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts & Bullsh!t.
Thom has been a respected Internet author for over 12 years. He has written extensively on the Internet, Technology and Lifestyle topics. Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts & Bullsh!t is one of 3 current blog projects he writes and manages.
Mr. Byxbe is President and Chief Internet Visionary of Metamorphosis Idea Lab located in Madison Heights, Michigan.
In addition, Thom is an Ordained Minister focused on pastoral counseling. He has been a certified Neuro-Linguistic Practitioner for over 20 years. In his current counseling practice he utilizes a blend of talk based counseling with NLP programming techniques.
If you have suggestions, comments or would like to submit recommendations for articles to appear in Concepts, Ideas, Thoughts Bullsh!t, please feel free to contact him at:
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