post something Quite Interesting..

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thanks for all the posting people.. evil people left fudo without the internet since 4.36pm friday hence, no response.

william morris used the name Gandolf.. but close Gandalf is, i would think, more likely to come from the old Norse Gandalfr..
quoting Tolkien "and so he was called among Men of the North Gandalf 'the Elf of the Wand' " gandr can mean wand, staff or magic. álfr means elf.

QI Fact of the Day
The ancient Greek punishment for adultery was to shove a radish up the adulterer's bottom.


QI Quote of the Day
"I live too near a wood to be scared by owls." GREEK PROVERB

'piece' is fairly commonly used.. i think.
but can refer to any work of art. or composition.
just that song has a pretty clear definition & dunbots just loves it when i'm pedantic

from the telegraph's QI column.. no, i don't read the telegraph

American princess

Pocahontas, the American Indian princess, was the first American to be buried in Britain. Baptised a Christian and renamed Rebecca, Pocahontas was brought to England in 1616, living in Brentford with her husband, John Rolfe, and son.
She was used as a walking advert for the Virginia Company to show potential colonists how charming the American Indians could be.
Pocahontas died as she and her family were setting out to return to Virginia, and was taken ashore and buried at Gravesend.
Her many descendants include Nancy Reagan and Wayne Newton, the Las Vegas entertainer, who is trying to recover Pocahontas' remains for reburial in Virginia.

Oops! I forgot he was spelt Gandolf.

It's not my theory though. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis both read Morris' work and borrowed his ideas. Tolkien was heavily influenced by The House of the Wolfings, a translation by Morris of a Norse saga. I know that the name Gandalf was adapted from Old Norse (specifically using the Völuspá), but because Tolkien was so heavily influenced by Morris (including The Well at the World's End), I don't think it's unlikely that Tolkien drew on the name Gandolf. I mean, he clearly based Shadowfax on the horse Silverfax. Anyway, it's just speculation about what went on in Tolkien's brain, so here's a proper QI fact:

William Morris was the first person to write stories set in completely invented (non-dream) fantasy worlds, and he had a huge impact on other major fantasy writers. But, he is more famous today for his wallpapers

yea, Tolkien must've been influenced by Morris' work.. sadly, i've only read Tolkien though.
i'm just glad people are posting here at all so thankyou

i returned to my curiosity about the amount of energy it would take to power the lifetime of a human that lives to the age of 80, and i am astounded at the energy that a body needs to equalize the demands of it's simple existence.

i use the average caloric intake of 2500 (10,500 kj) as my baseline daily consumption of a human.

2500*365 = 912,500 calories per year (3,832,500 kj)

912,500 * 80 = 73,000,000 calories consumed in a lifetime of 80 years (roughly 306,600,000 kj).
the conversion ratio is 0.277777778 "watt hours" per kilo-joule. one usually weighs far less than their peak weight when they die so it is to be deemed that all that they consumed "calorifically", they spent in kinetic activity.


that amount of energy would alternatively be sufficient to power:----

1 energy saving light bulb (18 w) : 540 years.

1 bed side radio alarm clock (100 w): 97 years.

1 toaster (1200 w): 8 years

1 thermonuclear blast of 8 kilotons (same as hiroshima): 0.03297562141491 seconds
(wow. i had no idea i was so powerful)



i must go to sleep now because i must wake up early.

Last edited by b9 on 09 May 2011, 8:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

Morris is not as good as Tolkien. He was more original, but his stories were not as well written. If you like fantasy literature, I would recommend A Game of Thrones, which is completely addictive reading.

I think this thread is a great idea. I'm just glad I've found somewhere I can read QI facts

Here's another QI fact:

YKK is the biggest zipper company in the world. Their largest factory manufactures over 7 million zippers a day. I guarantee that almost everybody has at least one pair of jeans, jacket, bag, or wallet with a zipper on it that says YKK.

But his wallpaper is much better than Tolkien's, though.

i'm a terrible reader really.. i can read fine but i get way too distracted & do other things.
glad you're getting something out of this Indy, hopefully this thread will one day be encyclopedic enough to last a lifetime

thanks to b9 for the curiosity & motivation to look into the energy we use, definitely quite interesting.

on topic, because guitar music is quite interesting.. i had never heard of Kaki King, but i just listened to this..
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shYdqbJgQdc[/youtube]
was kinda disappointed, but don't get me wrong, i love percussion & enjoy percussive/rhythmic playing.. just the word virtuoso conjured up ideas of fantastic melodies.. & at least one bluesy string bend
was still very good tho, just i'd like to hear some improvised melodies on top of that.. needs more colour.
only my opinion though..

on a similar note.. hehe
some Geoff Achison, with a little more blue.. & some jazzier shades.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WcUfQIc2is&feature=related[/youtube]

Thanks, I enjoyed that! I've got four of her CDs, but I've never actually seen her play.

(YouTube hasn't been working for me for months, but they seem to have done something to it recently to help us users of older browsers, and that clip worked.)

no problem.. youtube plays up for me also.
i'm on a ps3 though, so can't update my browser.
always good to see the ladies play guitar, or at least when they can play like that..
thanks for mentioning her. quite interesting indeed.

QI Fact of the Day

The word lard comes from the ancient Greek for 'dainty'.


QI Quote of the Day

"How can an educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than in science."
ALBERT EINSTEIN

QI fact:

Most cats don't "meow" with other cats. Adult domestic cats only tend to "meow" with humans.

Domestic cats change the pitch and length of their "meow" to communicate different things. Cat owners can (on average) identify what 40% of their cat's "meows" mean, whereas non-cat owning people do much worse.