Cool Ideas

Monday, March 24, 2008

Cool Information #32

Blue Whales

Blue whales are a type of baleen whales that can grow to be about 100 feet long! That's about the size of a school bus! These creatures are the largest animals to ever walk--or swim--the Earth! They're also the loudest, too. They can go up to about 190 decibels (dB). Decibels are what we use to measure loudness. People talk at about 60 decibels, and jets are about 120 dB. Any sound above 140 decibels is physically painful to human ears. Yet ironically, blue whale calls are so low, human ears can't pick up the sound!

But, wait. Blue whales are the largest creatures on Earth, ever! 100 feet may not seem like a lot. To give you a perspective, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) has a life-size image of the blue whale. This is the link to the webpage. The horrible part about these huge creatures is that they are nearly extinct. They're an endangered species.

That's all for blue whales. Be sure to visit WDCS' life-size whale image and be sure to leave feedback!

-WDCS-
-HowStuffWorks-
-Enchanted Learning-

Friday, February 22, 2008

Cool Information #31

Tpyo

"I want to the store to get some eggs, milk, and cookies."

You would probably say, "'I want'? Don't you mean 'I went'? That's a typo." But do you know that a 'typo' really is?

"Typo" is short for "typographical error." You may or may not have known that, but now you know. Anyway, what if you are IMing (mouse over "IMing" for a definition) someone, and you want to say "I went to the store to get some eggs, milk, and cookies"?

But what if you typed "I want..."? Then how do you tell the other person what you meant? Turns out, there is a simple solution! You don't have to say, "oops. srry. i meant 2 type 'i went'".

All you have to do is type "went" and then type an asterisk (*). Voila! You're done!

But hold on. What if, say, you wanted to wuote me. Let's say you wanted to copy that last sentence. Obviously, there's a typo. "Wuote" should have been "quote." But you didn't want to look stupid making a typographical error. So, all you have to do, is add an un-italicised "[]" and an italcised "sic" between them after the mispelled wurd or phrase. For example, the quote would look like this:

According to the blog, the author stated "What if, say, you wanted to wuote [sic] me."

That's it? That's it.

-Me-
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic-

Friday, February 8, 2008

Cool Stuff #48

The Concentric Circle Shapes

This video is quite... entertaining.

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot

-Onion News Network-

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Cool Information #30

Longest Words Without Vowels

"Rhythm" and "syzygy" are the two third-longest words without a single vowel.

Rhythm, is well, you should know what. And syzygy is something to do with astronomy, but it is too complicated to say exactly what.

Of course, "rhythms" comes in second, but that was obvious.

Now, the longest word is (drumroll, please)... twyndyllyngs! It is an ancient way of spelling a word that means "twin".

-http://www.englishforums.com/English/LongestWordWithoutVowels/bbjkk/Post.htm-
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syzygy-

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Cool Stuff #47

The Story of the Franklin Family

Okay, so my friend has a fish... or had a fish. So he named his fish Franklin. Franklin was a beta fish. This fish was, well, stupid. Franklin died, and he died only because of his stupidity. My friend fed his fish well, cleaned his tank, and everything. He cared about his fish.

Then one day, while my friend was watching, Franklin swam around his spherical tank so fast, that all the pebbles that were at the bottom floated up in the tank. After Franklin's speedy swim, he got tired. He lied down at the bottom of his tank and eventually drifted off to sleep.

Sure enough, the pebbles were still floating. After a while, since there was no current in the water, the pebbles crashed down... on Franklin. That is the story of Franklin and his tragic death.

-

But that isn't the funniest part! When Franklin died, it was during winter. My friend and his family wanted to bury him in their backyard, but the ground was frozen and digging was impossible. So, they decided to flush poor, stupid Franklin down their toilet.

They went into the bathroom holding a jar with water and Franklin inside. They poured Franklin into the toilet and flushed. The toilet water swirled around, and around, and filled back up. But when it refilled, there were 2 fish in the toilet bowl.

That's right. Two. No typo, no error. 2 fish came back up in the toilet.

My friend stared into the toilet in disbelief. He started cracking up, and flushed the toilet once again. This time, no fish came up, and it was the end of Franklin. But not to worry! Just a couple months later, my friend bought another beta fish and named him Franklin, Jr. and it was like Franklin never left.

And that is the story of a poor, poor, stupid fish named Franklin.

-NDS-