Funny name Himalaya, I alway thought it sounded like a tranvestite chicken

I think he means if you flatten the mountains to sea level.

Sharruma - 18 October 2008 10:49 AM

I think he’s right with the reindeer

I’ve heard this before somewhere
and reindeer would be a more logical
choice since the first animals were domesicated
to work on farms and reindeer would be more
efficient pulling heavy things around than dogs would.

But dogs were supposedly domesticated before mankind started cultivating land, which means that they would predate the need to have draft animals.

Acci also doesn’t seem to realise what his own numbers show
at the rate he lists of 1/3 the pop for each century that has passed
1900 - 33%
+ 1800 - 44%
+ 1700 - 48%
+ 1600 - 50%
+ 1500 - 51%
+ 1400 - 51.3%
+ 1300 - 51.4%

Somehow these figures seem wrong to me but…

That wasn’t 1/3rd for each century going all the way back.  That was just for the years 1800, 1900, and 2000.  The population in 1800 was roughly 1/3rd of the population in 1900, and the population in 1900 roughly 1/3rd of the population in 2000.  For all I know, in 1700 it was 1/10th of what it was in 1800.

Okay, according to our beloved Wikipedia, the world’s population in 1900 was about 1,650 million, which is about 28% of the 2000 population (which I was estimating at about 6,000 million).  So between one-third and one-fourth.  In 1800 it was 978 million, which is a bit over half that of what it was in 1900.  So my estimate for 1800 was low.  Which makes the claim that more people are alive than ever died even less likely.

Heh, if it was decreasing by 1/3rd every century you go back, that would be interesting.  That would give us a world population of 1.7 at the start of the first century AD.  Which I suppose would require somebody to give a virgin birth at around that point in time.  And while gathering the twelve disciples would be tricky, at least preaching to the swarming masses would be rather easy.

Sharruma - 18 October 2008 10:53 AM

Funny name Himalaya, I alway thought it sounded like a tranvestite chicken

I think he means if you flatten the mountains to sea level.

I still greatly doubt it then.  There are plenty of other mountain ranges in the world that would also have to be flattened, which would then add to the total non-Himalaya area.

Actually acci youre wrong..
Shrimps ARE the loudest thing in the ocean..
Pistol shrimps are so loud they use their claws to make a LOUD sound which blasts the water so fast it stuns smaller shrimps and fish which it eats. Its so loud it can break glass.

*All human beings have four nostrils.

Tho’ I don’t want to jump to conclusions, I am still at a loss for words for this ‘fact’.

I guess it all starts with what the definition of a ‘nostril’ is…

Semantics are fun

What it means is slugs have 4 nostrils

*Schizophrenics hardly ever yawn.

That one made me feel a lot better….........I yawn ALL the time.

Each king in a pack of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades-King David ,Clubs-Alexander the Great ,Hearts-Charlamagne and Diamonds-Julius Caeser.

This one was also covered by Snopes.

These kind of “facts” always get on my nerves. They simplify very complicated events into nice, compact, short-attention-span sentences.  This shortening either makes the facts half-truths or completely wrong.  The extended explanation is always far more interesting.

silver caliber magnum - 18 October 2008 08:47 PM

Actually acci youre wrong..
Shrimps ARE the loudest thing in the ocean..
Pistol shrimps are so loud they use their claws to make a LOUD sound which blasts the water so fast it stuns smaller shrimps and fish which it eats. Its so loud it can break glass.

Depth charges can break glass.  And wood.  And metal. 

Dily - 19 October 2008 06:31 AM

These kind of “facts” always get on my nerves. They simplify very complicated events into nice, compact, short-attention-span sentences.  This shortening either makes the facts half-truths or completely wrong.  The extended explanation is always far more interesting.

Is that a fact? 

Yeah, it should say ‘loudest underwater animal’, but that doesn’t sound fun.

Speaking of shrimp, the Mantis Shrimp also breaks the sound barrier when catching its prey, and n fact has the best eyesight of any member of the animal kingdom: Infra- and Ultra-violoet spectrums, quadroscopic field of vision, able to see down to microscopic levels, etc.

Heres the pistol shrimps wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol_shrimp
mant is shrimp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_Shrimp
I think mantis and pistol shrimps wow both of them can break glass

Some aquarium owners have claimed to have their aquariums broken by mantis shrimp. They are a much dreaded hitchhiker on live rock. Some people keep them on purpose though.

I think they are beautiful, but not really what you’d want in a community or reef tank.