Saturday, 8 October 2011

How many Moon landings were there?

Posed to me by a colleague. I was pretty close, off the top of my head, but I'll drop a little fact package here:

Number of Moon landings: 6 (Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17)
Number of humans that walked on the Moon: 12
They were:

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott, James Irwin, John W. Young, Charles Duke, Eugene Cernan, and Harrison Schmitt.

Number of people who went to the Moon twice: 3

No one landed on the Moon more than once, but Jim Lovell did go to the Moon twice without ever having walked on it - which must really suck.
Only the Yanks have been to the Moon. (officially)

All this stuff presupposes that no previous civilisations reached the Moon or alien races which became humans or anything like that....I'm just commenting on the generally accepted modern recorded truth.

I think the Russians should go to the Moon and put a parking ticket on the lunar rover(s). Just to show us they have a sense of humour.
If you don't think that's amusing then you're Russian.

And, conspirisists, we did go to the Moon, deal with it.

Do people get born with more than two feet?

A very quick googlisation indicates that people don't get born with more than two feet. I don't think Siamese (or whatever the politically correct description is...co-joined, that's it) twins count, since...well, they're twins. You've got to divide by the number of intended humans, surely.
Anyway, it amused me to resolve that those of us with two feet actually have a slightly higher than average number of feet, since some people have less than two feet, but it appears that no one has more than two feet.

I intend (but will likely fail) to research this some more.
There's got to be some freakshow out there with a human centipede....

Sunday, 26 June 2011

Kunstmatige

I've not checked it ahhht in ages! I've had plenty of check it ahhhts but I keep forgetting them, due, mostly, to the nature of the activity I tend to be involving myself with when they are suggested. Here is one of my own:

On the side of a pizza box, I read a phrase which led me to believe that there were no artificial ingredients, in Dutch. Although my Dutch sucks far worse than it should, investigating (or checking ahhht) language similarities or differences is one of my favourite games.
I assessed that kunstmatige must mean artificial. Then I thought: Hmm...kunst is art! I knew that one! And then I thought: Wahey! Art is at the beginning of artificial! What a coincidence!
...and then I thought: Hmm...what does artificial really mean?
From the Online etymology dictionary, I got this:

"...artificial, from L. artificialis "of or belonging to art," from artificium (see artifice). Meaning "made by man" (opposite of natural) is from early 15c. Applied to things that are not natural..."

So, fair enough really. I checked it  ahhht and it checked ahhht. It is no coincidence that 'kunstmatige' contains 'kunst' = 'art', also contained within the translation 'artificial'. Tidy.