mind blowing fact of the day (for me at least)

just watched the bbc 4 doc about diesel engines (and very good it was too).

during the program the presenter said that it is cheaper to transport something from shanghai to felixstowe than for your local supermarket to deliver something to your house 😯

well i thought it was pretty mindblowing anyhoo 🙂

any facts you have learned recently that were amazing to you?

Pineapples don’t grow on trees 😯

Cillit bang. Mind blowing.

Curtains are REALLY expensive.

it is cheaper to transport something from shanghai to felixstowe than for your local supermarket to deliver something to your house

That’s why I order all my shopping from the Shanghai branch of Waitrose.

Tonne miles .

On a related note, today I found out I could fly to Norway, buy a new tent in a shop and fly home for less than the UK trade price of said same tent. 😕

Mick Jagger sang backing vocals on ‘You’re so vain’ by Carly Simon.

TooTall – Member

Mick Jagger sang backing vocals on ‘You’re so vain’ by Carly Simon

Really? I’m going to have to check that out.

Cheers for that (genuine big engine anorak ) 😀

Bob Holness played the sax solo on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street.

mind blowing fact of the day

Bob Holness played the sax solo on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street.

If only it were actually a fact 😉

during the program the presenter said that it is cheaper to transport something from shanghai to felixstowe than for your local supermarket to deliver something to your house

How’d they work that out then? Cost per mile per product or something?

Bananas are actually herbs.
Not fruit.

any facts you have learned recently that were amazing to you?

That the Moon isn’t a natural satellite but probably a hollowed-out planetoid from which aliens broadcast ‘an artificial sense of self and the world’ that humans mistakenly perceive as reality.

Blew my mind when I found that out.

Bob Holness….

…was the first actor ever to play the character of James Bond.

Today I witnessed my 1st Petit Mal Epileptic Absence Seizure…

Was teasing my workmate in Oxfam when she just glazed over and failed to respond to anything for a few minutes~ to start with, I thought I must’ve upset her, then realized it must be something to do with her epilepsy.

It was disconcerting and fascinating at the same time~ I was really concerned and kept asking if she was OK, without any response~ her eyes were open and she moved her head as if she was looking at something, but she had an eerie glazed look like a zombie.

When she came to, I asked her what had happened and she explained it all…

I knew about spasms and seizures, but didn’t know about the absence aspect.

You can make a boat with a kitten, eggs, sugar and a blender.

A catameringue

You can do the PADI deep diver speciality course in Scapa Flow. For about the same amount of cash, you can fly to Malta, spend a week in a hotel, do the course and fly home.
However the sums fall apart when, after watching an episode of Great Continental Railway Journeys, you decide to take the train home.

“On a related note, today I found out I could fly to Norway, buy a new tent in a shop and fly home for less than the UK trade price of said same tent. “

Which tent…..i is going to norway next week 😉 is it hilleberg ? im in the market for a new un….

How’d they work that out then? Cost per mile per product or something?

I’d take a guess at the more obvious $/Mile/Kg

On that note the Space Shuttle is better value per mile than the Heathrow Express

You can make a boat with a kitten, eggs, sugar and a blender.

A catameringue

Bravo.

I can fly to/from the US, buy the bike I want and have a week riding holiday for less than than the RRP of buying the bike here. In fact, I’d still save about 5%.

Getting your shopping out of the port at Felixstowe would be a total PITA though.

Wooly mammoths were alive when the pyramids were being built

That the Moon isn’t a natural satellite but probably a hollowed-out planetoid from which aliens broadcast ‘an artificial sense of self and the world’ that humans mistakenly perceive as reality.

ernie reads too many of jivehoney’s posts

I can fly to/from the US, buy the bike I want and have a week riding holiday for less than than the RRP of buying the bike here. In fact, I’d still save about 5%.

Partly you have discovered VAT…

Whats truly amazing is in checking out my trip to the states that in Utah there are a potential 17 components of sales tax all added together that can double the sales tax rate depending on which town I’m in and they wont actually tell me the cost of the item until I get to the till and will probably expect a tip for it too…

On that note the Space Shuttle is better value per mile than the Heathrow Express

shame they cancelled the Shuttle program, getting to Heathrow is a real pain now…

Wooly mammoths were alive when the pyramids were being built

Wooly mammoths built the pyramids and are encased inside in hibernation chambers waiting to come back out and take over the world….

Johnny Cash could translate Russian Morse code

Not mind blowing if you know about map projections but last night we were planning a round the world trip we’re taking with some friends so had a map up:

One of the girls commented on how massive Greenland is and was pretty much taken aback when I pointed out that it’s less than a third the size of Brazil and smaller than Algeria.

Found out recently that Edinburgh is further west than Bristol

Re lemonysam

love the peter’s projection map

That the world’s first commercial maglev train system was in Birmingham 1984 .

Shame they didn’t stick with it we could all have been commuting to work at 300mph 🙂

One container ship can produce as much pollution as 50 million cars (or 30 million Volkswagens :-))

Some interesting things in that article Bimbler, but when they talk about “Europe needs a low emission zone right around its coasts”, I can’t help but think that a low emission zone sounds as useful as having a “no pissing zone” in one corner of a swimming pool. It’s one atmosphere, one planet etc etc – spew it out somewhere, we all get it eventually, low emission zones or not.

Anyhoo…

The first curry house in the UK opened fifty-odd years before the first chippy.

OK not exactly mind-blowing, mildly diverting at best, still a good factoid though.

Is that we’re off to Bike park Wales on Sat, & the weather is looking good. 🙂

If you put all the possible numbers in order, the last one will be zero, alphabetically.

On that note the Space Shuttle is better value per mile than the Heathrow Express

And to put that into context the Space Shuttle is a horrendously expensive way to put anything into space, so bad in fact that it never became commercially viable despite the original intentions.

not so much mind-blowing as just really sad – Carbisdale Youth Hostel is closed. What is mind blowing is that this was a youth hostel.

Dead skin and dust mite poo make up one third of the weight of a two year old, unwashed, pillow.