Real Facts That "Feel Wrong"

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It would be interesting to find out what the first spoken word was. my guess is that it was scatological.

Lucy's brother dropped a rock on her hand, and she screamed "OH! s**t!".

Some say that the first sentence ever uttered was a palidrome (spelled the same way forward and backward).

"Madam. I'm Adam".

another good candidate for first spoken "word" is "HMPH!"

Actually probably the most widespread word in the greatest number of languages (but even this word is not quite universal to all languages but is pretty close: many unrelated languages on every continent have something like this word) is "mama" meaning "mama". Babies cry "MAAaaaaaah". So that became the name of the person they are crying for. Or that's how my Mama explained it to me.

I have my own CRAZY theory about, not the first word ever, but about what the oldest surviving thing in the English language is.

My theory is that the oldest surviving thing in English is "tsk tsk tsk" (that tongue clicking sound you make when you nod your head to express dismay/disapproval).

I suspect that when the first anatomical modern people invented language while still in southern Africa it was lot like the modern Khoisan languages of the Bushman people of southern africa. And that it had a lot of "click consonants"- odd sound effects type sounds made with toungue (pops and clicks).

After some point in the Paleolithic one group branched off from the original language group and dispensed with the click sounds and just used normal phonemes (vowels and consonants). And that group was the ancestor of every other language family on earth that is NOT Khoisan in the rest of Africa and in the world.

But some survivals of the click speech survives in non bushman languages. And maybe our own tongue clicking thing is a survival of that common ancestor language in Africa of the Khoisan and nonKhoisan languages.

Humans and tunicates belong to the same phylum - chordata.

The original "Siamese" cat of Thailand is not the cats with "points" (markings) we usually associate with that breed. It is the Korat.

Yes they do. Criteria, possessed by any chordate at some time in its development (this can include traits in an embryo or immature phase not possessed by the adult):

1. Pharyngeal gill slits.
2. A notochord.
3. A dorsal tubular nerve chord.
4. A post anal tail (yes, humans do have one, but its so small and atrophied that the bones don't make it out of the body in most people. Some people ARE in fact born with a tail that does, but the majority have it surgically removed even though it poses no medical risk).

One and two are present in the embryo in humans. Tunicates (Urochordates) possess three and four in their free swimming larval stage.

that people actually eat and enjoy aubergine.

Theyre also called "sea squirts".

Imagine your pet goldfish -with its pouting lips and gills. Then imagine JUST the pouting mouth and gills (actually just one gill on one side)...and NOTHING else on the animal! No brain, no eyes, no fins, not tail, nada. Just two openings pumping water. And imagine that stuck to a rock on the sea floor. That's a sea squirt. Simple sessile critter. Sucking in water in one hole, and pumping out of another hole on the side.

Hard to believe it could be related to the ancestors of humans.

But in its larval form it swims around, and thus has a tail and a "notochord" (rudimentary spinal chord) so it can find its own home away from mom and dad. It then glues it head to a rock, and the rest of the critter disappears, and it grows up to be that big pair of pulsating holes stuck to a rock.

Apparently at some point half of billion years ago one of the larval forms (maybe it was a deviant aspie sea squirt) failed to grow up, and stayed in its larval form, and kept on free swimming , and became the first fish. And the fish gave rise to four classes of fish, and to amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, primates, and to us.

Britain now has colder winters than south western British Columbia, now. How did that happen?

There was once a political leader who needed to wear diapers.

Urochordates are certainly not direct human ancestors. They are in fact a dead end branch of chordate evolution. Also don't forget the Cephalochordates (lancets)--another branch off the tree from the ancestor on its way to becoming fish.

Perhaps melting polar ice caps reducing the flow of the Gulf Stream.

Earth is actually one of the coldest things in the universe.

Case in Point: Some of the hottest things in the universe are over a million degrees Celsius. The average temperature of the earth is 15 degrees Celsius. The lowest temperature possible is -273.15 degrees Celsius.

Cape Cod is on the same latitude as the French Riviera.

Elements whose atoms have even numbers of protons usually have multiple stable isotopes. Those with odd numbers of protons usually only have one or two stable isotopes. Nuclei with even numbers of neutrons are usually more stable than those with odd numbers of neutrons. There are only five known stable nuclei that have both an odd number of protons and an odd number of neutrons.