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Trivia ~ People
Human hands, feet, toes, and fingertips have patterns of ridges that improve their ability to grip and hold without slipping. Fingerprints also appear in some higher primates (apes), and in one animal that is not so closely related: the koala bear (which is not actually a bear but a marsupial).
Like humans, koalas need to grip and hold while using their hands and feet to climb among the smooth branches of eucalyptus trees. Their finger pads are not only the same size and shape as ours,
they have evolved almost the same pattern of whorls, loops, and ridges. Their prints are so much like ours that they could be confused for human prints at a crime scene. There are, however, two interesting differences: koalas have two thumbs on each hand, and they have long, sharp claws instead of fingernails.
The strong similarity of human and koala fingerprints is an example of convergent evolution, in which two different life forms evolve similar adaptations to solve the same problem.
Why don't our lungs collapse when we breathe out?
If our lungs were simply made out of wet cells like the rest of our body, then every time we exhaled the tiny air chambers (alveoli) would collapse and stick shut because of water's surface tension.
The cells lining the inside surfaces of our alveoli come in two kinds. Type I cells are the smooth, thin cells that allow oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. Type II cells are the ones that keep the lungs open. They do this by secreting a layer of lipids (fat molecules) and proteins. These molecules, called surfactants, reduce water's surface tension, preventing the alveoli from collapsing when the lungs contract.
Prematurely born infants sometimes suffer from respiratory distress syndrome, in which the lungs partially collapse because the type II cells are not able to produce enough surfactant molecules.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
Yak, yak, kaboom
When you speak, you release about 200 ergs of energy per syllable. The number of ergs released by the first atom bomb, on the other hand, was 10 to the 21st power – 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. All of which shows that the phrase, “Talking someone to death,” is probably a gross exaggeration, except when applied to my ex wife.
In the days of witch trials, witches were burned at the stake because witches supposedly would not burn. If you burned and died, Oh well, you were not a witch.
If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
If the human body were to loose its immune system, the bacteria in the stomach alone would consume a person within 48 hours.
On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.
China has more English speakers than the United States.
The ridges under your nose are the medial band and the lateral band and the valley between them is known as the philtrum, Greek for "love charm." The Greeks thought the upper lip, if turned on end, looked like Cupid's bow.
Anyway, enough kissy, kissy. The ridges that create the philtrum are there to protect several delicate bones that come together right beneath them, one of which is the bone that holds your nostrils apart. That's pretty darned important. Were your two nostrils to collapse into one big hole, who knows? The next time you sneezed, you might blow your brains out.
During 18th-Century France, visitors to the royal palace in Versailles were allowed to stand in a roped-off section of the main dining room and watch the king an queen eat.
I'm sure you know people who are not Chinese who use chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant just to demonstrate their sophistication. In your face comes their savoir fare; on their shirt or blouse drops the cold noodles with sesame sauce.
But why do the Chinese use chopsticks in the first place?
They developed this custom because they didn't need anything resembling a knife and fork at the table. They cut up food into bite-sized pieces in the kitchen before serving it. This stemmed from their belief that bringing meat to the table in any form resembling an animal was uncivilized and that it was inhospitable, anyway, to ask a guest to cut food while eating.
At 60 miles per hour, with one car-length distance between cars for every 10 mph of speed, 40 cars per minute can pass a single point--in theory. But driver psychology triumphs over
mathematics. In fact, people begin to slow down once traffic density exceeds 25 cars per minute. At 33 cars per minute they're down to 35 mph. Any more crowding than that and the ripple affect takes over, possibly resulting in stop-and-go traffic when there's actually still enough room for cars to move freely at highway speed.
There is another way to check a person's identity--aside from finger printing, that is. Everyone's tongue print is different, too. I think there are a few reasons why this didn't become a popular detection system, though. First, most people resist the idea of putting ink on their tongues before they press it to a piece of paper. Second, most people don't hold things with their tongue when they are committing crimes.
What's the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst?
They both reduce the contents of your wallet as much as they shrink your head. But only one, the psychiatrist, can be found in a light bulb joke. (How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but it has to really want to change.)
In the spirit of the reality principle, however, a psychiatrist is a medical doctor who has specialized in problems of the mind. He or she is likely to use a variety of approaches, including drugs, to heal patients.
Psychoanalysts do not need a medical degree, although they may have one, and they must have undergone analysis themselves. They are the ones who, in classical analysis, put their patients on a couch. These patients tend to have deep problems. With four to five sessions a week the norm, they also had better have deep pockets.
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other good Trivia to add please E-mail me
