Modern Vespa

So I'm snowed in, bored and have a few minutes before I need to go throw some laundry on while I wait for my wife to get home from visiting her parents. Now there is some useless information.

I thought maybe a fun winter thread (OK winter for a lot of us) about what useless fact you learnt that might make some of us think "huh, I didn't know that". Just one post per day and one useless fact but whatever if you're full of useless information bring it on. I doubt it will gain any traction but it might be a fun look in to our minds as to what useless piece of knowledge got our attention.

So let me start.... The Muppet song mahna-mahna actually came from a softcore porn. Oh Jim Henson you naughty boy!


https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/mahna-mahna-came-porn-film-flna6C9593504

Here's my input. The band members of Toto have played on over 5000 albums. Thriller by Michael Jackson is just one of many and yet they are not in the hall of fame
but nwa is....WTF?

Yep. I've been shoveling snow for the past hour...


Bob

Ha, this is good winter time reading!

I'm actually lousy in anykind of trivia. I hated the board game Trivial Pursuit that used to be popular - I remembered everything about music and bands and almost nothing of anything else.

Still, I'll throw in this one: Depends on the viewpoint, but it's fair to say that Linus Torvalds, the master mind behind Linux open computer operating system, enabling e.g. the growth of Android system to the scale it is today, is probably one of the most influential Finns in the history.

The trivia is about his name: "officially" he is named according to Linus Pauling, a Nobel-price winning American chemist. Torvalds himself have said, that he strongly believes Linus from the Peanuts cartoon has been equally influential to his naming: therefore he called himself "half Nobel-winning chemist, half blanket-carrying cartoon character"....

Having got up out of bed

Haven't had a post from Peddler for 2 days.

Don't call search and rescue yet, it's actually only 28hrs.

Hard to argue with the logic behind that one.

49,000 people die from poisonous snakes in India each year.

I will not be going there soon.

You'll be fine as long as you don't order the snake

Great winter thread.

I've got a million of 'em.

Every time I start pontificating my wife rolls her eyey and says. "Ok, here comes another one."

Female opossoms have 13 teats.

May not sound important unless you're the 14th baby opossum.

71F here today, so I joined some others for a 100Mile+ ride to a lake and back. I couldn't help, sorry.

My interesting fact, and keeping with the theme of music is that John Geils, he of the J Geils Band (think Love Stinks or Freeze Frame), was in the last decades of his life legally forbidden to use his name professionally. Apparently his partners in the band beat him to the punch.

The gestation period of an elephant is 22 months.

I'll get my coat .......

The Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) is a large prehistoric fish about a yard long, whose fossils have been found in 400million year old rock formations.
They still can be found deep in the waters of the Indian Ocean off the Comoros Islands.

Coelacanth females lay eggs, each about the size of a grapefruit, but retains them internally until the offspring are able to survive outside the womb. the female then gives live birth. This gestation period can be as much as 3 years.

Photo by © Citron /, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29350355

Yeah I remember when they found the first live one. It was pretty big news.

OK My Sunday useless fact.

Bored on a snowy or rainy day and just want some comfort food and old movies? Well you can download or stream (free) some great commentary from Red Letter Media. Not for everyone, it's pretty edgy and I wouldn't put the Mr Plinkett commentaries on with the kiddies around. The film insight is good and if you actually feel any of the Star Wars reboots are good this is not for you.

https://redlettermedia.bandcamp.com/audio

Here a few of his reviews. If the F bomb offends you stay away. Best known for his Star Wars reviews.

If you are a bit technical the audio can be mixed in to the Video.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedLetterMedia/comments/867rfb/guide_to_mixing_rlm_commentary_tracks_with/

It always amazed me that The Beatles were originally rejected by a half dozen record companies. Decca, in their rejection, said "Guitar groups are on the way out" and "The Beatles have no future in show business."


Besides weathermen and women, has anyone in any industry ever gotten things so wrong?

Linen is stronger when wet

There are a series windows in the famously perilous north face of the Eiger. A train tunnel runs through the mountain and passengers can disembark at a certain point for a peek out at the view.

I don't know why this fact fascinates me, I mean, why shouldn't there be? I suppose it must be the juxtaposition of relatively mundane safety and the ball clenching terror of the climbers position just outside the window.

The male Blue Whale has an 8 foot penis.

Got a whole college credit out of that course. Can't say I remember much else.

Glad I'm not a whale then! A six pack, pack of smokes and some condoms was expensive enough in my younger days. I can only imagine how much an 8 foot condom would have cost!

Doubt they're worried about family planning. Just think what they save on diapers!

True. But one drunken night and a daddy whale with a shotgun and you are together forever. Think Paradise by the Dashboard Light but you know... with whales. Managed to tie the whole music theme back in to this transgression.

SOMEBODY SAVE THIS THREAD!!!!

Oh, hell, I'll do it.

Meinhardt Raabe, one of the Wizard of Oz munchkins, was from my home town.

kangaroos don't fart.

See what happens when JP disappears for two days?

Why don't they explode?

They must have some type of pressure release valve.

They just avoid beans.

I though I was doing a fine job Ah well...

Yeah the avoiding beans thing makes good sense.

Apparently scientists are working on how to get the gut flora of kangaroos transplanted into cows to stop the methane pollution from cows.

Giraffe's necks are long because they use them to fight. They do not eat from the very tops of tress.

Is this thread a memory test for episodes of QI ?

Depends... what is QI?

OK fine, I know... we have Google in Canada now!

Honestly that is one of the great thing about this site. The scooter stuff is awesome but honesty how many times do we need to lookup how to change our oil or properly care for our wooden Vespa? Now I want to watch episodes of QI.

The Scooter Girls pics thread is fun because of the banter NOT the pics so much. Otherwise it's really just a super lazy Google image search. That's just an example. If we didn't go off topic or have [NSR] topics during the winter up north this place would be potentially about as exciting as The Facts of Life reruns.

The difference is that, for a wooden Vespa, the oil goes on the outside.

JK Rowling's original submission for the "Harry Potter" series was rejected by 12 publishers before finally being accepted by Bloomsbury Publishing.

Wow... Just when I though humanity had a future.

http://www.funtrivia.com/quizzes/television/television_d-g/facts_of_life.html

Another useless fact.

Apparently the oil change for an LX only uses half a bottle of oil.

So in Indonesia the dealer gives you the "other" half which you can bring back for next time!

He died just south of mine, in Penney Farms, a retirement community founded by J.C. Penney in 1926.

My dealer gave me the partial liter of oil left over from my BV's oil change. I paid for the whole bottle, so why wouldn't he give me the remainder that didn't go into the scoot?

Small world, eh? I was aware he'd retired in Florida, didn't pay that close of attention as to where.....

Not sure where he is, but I bet he ain't shovelin' snow.

Been camping with my Scouts. Enjoyed the vacation.