For every human killed by a shark, humans kill 100 million sharks.

(assuming the annual number of humans killed by a shark attack is 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_attack#Statistics. Even if you set the annual fatalities to the highest number - 16 - that still means that for every person killed, about 6.25 million sharks are killed by people.

This can be done without permanent damage to your eyes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_colors, anyone? There used to be a link to a .gif that inverted its colors causing you to see true green for a couple of seconds.

I stopped playing WoW today.
I'm watching Mr Deeds in HD
My son is sitting with me
There's a camera beside the computer I'm at
I got my haircut today
I'm going to watch True Blood via On Demand tonight because I missed it last night

About 10 kilometers from the bottom of the sea if i recal (Mount Everest is a little under 9 kilometers). Still, Mars has a volcano over 13 kilomemeters tall.

Edit: remebered a tiny bit wrong, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Mons is 27 kilometers tall :blink:

Well, they're closer to South America than Hawaii is to the US.

Here is one, just for kicks...

Build a box from wood, about the size of a shoe box.
Give it a bottom and four sides, but leave the top open. Cover the top with a fine screen.
Drill a hole in each side the same size as a quarter. Mount it to something heavy, that cannot be moved by a raccoon.
Drop a couple quarters in the box, and set it outside under a light source. Check it each morning at sunrise.
If you have any raccoons in your yard, they will be stuck with their arm in the box.

The raccoon will be attracted to the quarter, and will figure out that it can reach through the holes and grab one.
It will not, however, let go of the quarter once it realizes that it can not now pull it's arm out through the hole.
It will remain there, stuck by the conundrum, until something frightens it enough for it to forget about the shiny quarter...

Apparently the cheetah has been demoted. I agree with your second statement though.



True, but I was speaking more about continental South America, and said islands aren't even countries anyway.

here is your green skin :turtle: :frog: :yuck:

Well that's just stupid as well then; if that's the case, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Cone-fundamentals-with-srgb-spectrum.png, why say "humans can't see green" instead of "humans can't see red"? Reciprocally, when humans see red the cones which see green are also activated, so the same reasoning applies. You'll appreciate then, however, that when humans see blue, the cones for both green and red are activated as well, so by this reasoning humans can't see blue either. So here we have it - we can't see neither red, green nor blue. A terrible state to be in, indeed.

This is bull-crap, of course. The ability of an organism to "see green" is its ability to discern that the light that it sees has a wavelength of approx. 550 nm, as opposed to some other wavelength. It doesn't matter to which wavelength which cones in humans' eyes respond to, as long as those cones send the information to the brain from which it is capable of discerning that the light hitting the retina is of the wavelength corresponding to what we call "green". "Green" is not a light which activates only the M cones in humans' eyes, "green" is the light which activates them in such a way that all the cones, S, M and L, respond to that light as if they were hit by a light of wavelength of approximately 550 nm. Same goes for red and blue. For red this is especially the case, because you'll notice from that graph that those cones which you say "see red" (L cones) actually have the greatest responsiveness not to the wavelength of light which corresponds to red, but actually very close to that which corresponds to green.

"Green colour" is not the activation of M cones without the activation of S and L cones, green colour is the activation of all three types of cones in such a way that from those impulses our brain concludes that the incoming light has a wavelength of 550 nm.

Link to reputable site or I call Shenanigans.
:hehe:

In this case I would actually much prefer "pics or it didn't happen". ^_^

Don't worry about stills, If this works I'm posting video.

I've also been told that raccoons can't right themselves if they wind up on their backs(which I don't believe) But, if I could find a way to get them to grab the quarter while inverting them....

Boxing was the first sport to be filmed. Thomas A. Edison filmed a boxing match between Jack Cushing and Mike Leonard in 1894.

When actor Michael J. Fox first auditioned for the TV series Family Ties, he was $35,000 in debt and living on macaroni and cheese.

Owls have asymmetrical ears: one is directed downward, the other upward.

Gene Simmons, of the shock-rock group Kiss, earned a B.A. in education and speaks 4 languages.

The surface of Venus has been better mapped than the Earth’s seabed.

A 1999 survey of 25,500 standard English-language dictionary words found that 93 percent of them have been registered as dot-coms.

Rehearsing a stage act in 1988, Alice Cooper nearly hung himself when a safety rope broke and the noose around his neck tightened.

ENIAC, the first electronic computer, appeared 50 years ago. The original ENIAC was about 80 feet long, weighed 30 tons and had 17,000 tubes. By comparison, a desktop computer today can store a million times more information than an ENIAC, and is 50,000 times faster.

Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song "Happy Birthday."

A sunbeam setting out through space at the rate of 186,000 miles a second would go in a gigantic circle and return to its origins after about 200 billion years.

The adjective metopic means "of the forehead."

It is estimated that a healthy individual release 3.5 oz. of gas in a single flatulent emission, or about 17 oz. in a day.

Hair does not continue to grow after death because it requires nourishment from pumping blood. The hair only appears longer because skin pulls away as the body begins to dry out.

In 1832, Scottish surgeon Neil Arnott devised water beds to improve his patients’ comfort.

The monkey wrench is named after its inventor, a London blacksmith named Charles Moncke.

A male kangaroo is called a boomer, and a female is called a flyer.

Fireflies are actually beetles.

The human heart is no bigger than a fist and yet is wrapped in so much muscle that it can continue pumping even if a third of its muscle mass is destroyed.

The national anthem of Austria was composed by Wolfgang Mozart.

To a competitive swimmer, "d.p.s." means "distance per stroke".





Umm...Veeno? This thread is called "useless facts" not "really cool stuff about how the human eye and brain perceive color". Cool bit of info, though. :goodjob:

Precisely, and isn't what I wrote in that post both a fact and useless?

Nay, sir. It's a fact, but I've used it to further my knowledge of facts, so it isn't useless. ^_^

But in that way every fact posted here is not useless.

(That was also a useless fact.)

(And that.)

(And that.)

.
.
.



Yay, I've just posted aleph-null useless facts. I presume I get the priiize? :hehe:

I found it very informative and useful.


Yep. here you go: :cookie:

Did some quick Google searching, all I could find was http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071029143109AA4z9aJ
Not definitive, I know.
I've never tried it myself, but it's what my dad told me, so I believe it.


Raccoons can right themselves. Although when threatened, they will fight like a cat.
That is to say, they will roll onto their backs and use their claws as weapons.
(In dog language, rolling onto their back is a sign of submission. In cat language, it is a sign of aggression.)

When coon hunting, if a raccoon is shot out of a tree, and falls into a stream or pond, the dogs will instinctively go into the water after it.
It is a well documented fact that a raccoon will hold a dog's head under water and drown it in such a situation (if it wasn't killed by the shot).

Raccoons are also known to climb up one tree, where the dogs will "tree it", then climb down another tree, thus evading the dogs.

Wiley lil'critters they are.

So that means we can postulate the Universe is: 117,313,920,000,000,000,000,000 miles in it's...circumference? Or would it be diameter? I hated geometry, always svcked at it. Either way, thats pretty small actually, I always figured the universe was much bigger then a number that size. Expected at least 10-15 more zeroes behind it. (186,000 x 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days x 200,000,000,000, right?, Or am I missing a calculation somewhere?)

Davor, no fact is useless. It's just unused in some conversations.

There are 18 different animal shapes in a box of Animal Crackers.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food.

A starfish can turn its self inside out.

A kangaroo can't jump unless its tail is touching the ground.

A zebra is white with black stripes.

About 85% of the plant life on the Earth is in the ocean.

If the Earth was smooth, the ocean would cover the entire surface to a depth of 12,000 feet.

Less than 2% of the water on Earth is fresh.

It takes the insect eating Venus Flytrap plant only half a second to shut its trap on prey.

Just twenty seconds' worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.

At least 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

millionth, driver - silver?, nurple.

challenge accepted
But you already knew that

[edit] 1" from the tip of the elbow.

[2]orange is still a go, I think

Hyena are not from the canine family but are, in a way, related to a civet.


*lick'd elbow*

Nope, not impossible.

Fixed.

lol...
I fell for it too, when I read the list it was in.

I can aaaaalmost do it, but it kind of hurts my jaws when I try.

Those don't rhyme at all...
Maybe if it was Millonth and Drilver, but, yeah, just no.